Wolves at the Gate
by altol
Summary: 2 weeks. It may as well be a lifetime. S/Q
1. Chapter 1

A/N: If this story looks familiar, that's because it is. It's part of 'A Sorta Fairytale', which I hacked up into a suitable prequel for this story, as part of the universe. You might want to skim through it even if you've read it already, because I've changed the ending.

Instructor Galen has his hands folded behind his back as he surveys the cluster of students in front of him, all of whom are trying very hard to stand in the straight line he had demanded.

The nerves are so strong in this group that there is almost a distinct hum in the air. Faces are pale, eyes are round with lashes fluttering, and there is that familiar hint of bile in the air that suggests one of them has believed the terrible rumors about battling a T-Rexaur on the first day and has vomited before class. Fresh blood, in more ways than one.

One in every group, every year.

He looks at them all in turn. Most stare at their feet; a few meet his gaze, briefly. A red-haired girl gives him a wink. A boy with green eyes meets his gaze head-on, fearless; a blonde girl with ice blue eyes stares beyond him, as if she can already see her future.

These are all ones to watch.

Their first day is always his favorite.

"Welcome to Battle Tactics 101. In this class, you'll learn the basics of physical combat as required for future SeeD Training. Look to your left, and look to your right. One of the people next to you won't make the program. The other will most likely die on a mission. As for the person standing between the unfortunate two you just looked at, well, from where I'm standing, your scrawny asses got better odds for being struck by lightning than making SeeD. If anybody's feeling like they showed up to the wrong class, I invite all of you to get the fuck out of here, now, and go home to mommy."

Nobody leaves, although there are quite a few nervous shuffles and an increase in blinking. Whether this is because most of them are war orphans and have no mother to return to, or because they are bound and determined to wear a SeeD uniform, Galen is never sure..

Maybe both.

"Now, I want your name, and the vocation or weapon you're aiming for."

"Shira Anglave, sniper."

"Drew Aeden, close-range ballistics specialist."

"Seifer Almasy, gunblade specialist." It is the boy that so readily met his gaze earlier. The gunblade is a dying art- though the revolver does offer some advantage on the battlefield, the bulk of the gun makes up for it. Gunblade wielders are few and far between.

"Dirk Chevis, martial arts."

"Hunter Graves, healing medic, sub-specialty explosives expert."

"Raze Kile, martial arts, sub-specialty, computer tech."

"James Marek, nunchaku."

"Sidney Mason, bowstaff."

"Cedric Podney, hand gun."

"Dillon Seagray, bowstaff."

"Quistis Trepe, chain whip," says the girl with the arctic eyes.

If the gunblade is a dying art, then the way of the chain whip is dead, buried, and maggot-ridden.

Down the line, Galen can see the blonde-haired boy smirking at the girl's choice, though he is not the only one.

The list continues.

"Galanna Valentine, martial arts."

"Briar Wells, hand guns."

"Xu Yiang, ballistics, sub-specialty, demolition."

Still standing straight in line, Quistis feels her cheeks burn. Her first day, and already she is being laughed at.

Not a good start.

The first class passes without incident (with the exception of Briar Wells, who throws up during their tour of the Training Center when Instructor Galen mentions the resident T-Rexaur population.)

"Hey! You!" Heading to her next class, Battle Psychology 101, Quistis hears a voice call behind her. It belongs to the blonde-haired boy that smirked at her in line, and, as it happens, he is yelling after her specifically.

Seifer Almasy. Aspiring gunblade specialist. Scored within the 90th percentile on the GVAB (Garden Vocation Aptitude Battery). No surviving parents, like her. She has done at least a cursory research on all of her fellow classmates, and it seems like this Almasy is going to be a front runner for top of the class. Only Briar Wells scored better than she (by 1 point) on the GVAB, and the evidence of Briar Wells combat potential is now splattered all over a potted plant in the Training Center.

"So, a whip? Really?" He is walking next to her now. "You going to take up lion taming, or what?"

"Excuse me?" she says, adjusting the stack of books against her hip. No boy has ever talked to her this way before.

"I mean, what the hell were you thinking? What exactly do you think a scrap of leather is gonna do against a T-Rexaur?"

"This is criticism about my choice of weapon from the boy who chose a gunblade?"

"Say what?" Clearly, the boy isn't used to having his questions turned around on him or having anyone criticize his beloved weapon, which he probably picked just because he thought it made him look cool. But then, most boys share his train of thought, though few want to take on the daunting task of mastering a gunblade.

"I mean, it's a blade and a gun both. Did you need a backup, just in case either your swordsmanship or your aim is lacking? If that's the case, I think it's rather sad, really. If you need any help improving your skills, though, I'd be happy to help you, if you want."

She leaves him there gaping at her as the next bell rings.

Later in their next class, he leans over. "My name is Seifer Almasy. You'd better remember it, 'cause someday, I'm going to be famous."

...

...

...

Much later, in the dark of her room, she repeats his name out loud. Something hides inside that name, some sort of dj vu that nudges at her when she looks at him. But then, this is true of several things in her life- of people, place and things that seem to grasp at her, but never fully take hold.

Perhaps they have met before. It is certainly possible- from when she first came to Garden, she remembers only faintly being sad and then Shiva's presence blossoming in her mind, the occupation clean and crystalline like ice crystals numbing every thought. Early junctioning, they'd told her, was mandatory for every student, but after listening to Xu and some of the others, she thinks perhaps it had only been mandatory for _her_.

She does not remember her childhood, but then, she is not sure she wants to. She has no parents, no happy could it have been?

"Seifer Almasy." she repeats, narrowing her eyes and waiting for some spark to ignite in the dark pit of her memory. Nothing comes.

"Are you up there with a guest?" mutters her roommate. "Because it's rude not to share."

Quistis smiles in the dark. "Goodnight, Xu."

"Night, Quistis."

...

..

.

Blue mats have been set down in the gymnasium- they stand like random floating islands on the shiny marble floor.

"Today," says Instructor Galen, gesturing at the mats, "You'll be putting to practice what I've taught you over the last five weeks...on each other. I want weapon tips and edges covered with the black foam, and I want gun barrels open for my inspection, silicon-paint bullets only. Cut down your casts by half, and for those of you not yet comfortable with casting, don't do it at all. Now pair off and get going. You've the whole period- extra points go to hits in the critical zones we discussed."

She is still taping the barb on her chain whip when she notices a shadow looming over her. "Are you done yet?" He asks her.

She blinks at him for a moment before she realizes that he wants to be partners. She would never have thought he would have chosen her- she would have thought he would have picked Dirk Chevis or Dillon Seagray, who by all accounts are the more aggressive fighters in their class, and it is no secret also that Galanna Valentine has a less-than-subtle interest in 'partnering up' with young Mr. Almasy, whether on the mat or a mattress Quistis isn't sure.

Knowing Galanna, probably both.

Over in the corner, Xu gives her a quizzical glance. When Quistis shrugs in return, Xu walks over to Dirk Chevis's mat and promptly shoots him in the foot. He hops around, cursing at her.

"Hurry it up," Seifer commands arrogantly, his gunblade slung over his shoulder. "Or Instructor Galen'll have to dole out the first points for Briar Well's punching her own eye out."

Quistis gets to her feet. "Let's do it, then."

Seifer raises an eyebrow. "Here? On the matt? Really Trepe, first the whip, now this?"

She rolls her eyes.

_Boys._

She hates that her cheeks are red.

They take a moment to warm up, her snapping the whip though its paces, him swinging the gunblade in a few fluid arcs to loosen up his arm.

"Well, let's see what that piece of dental floss of yours can do," he says, grinning.

There is no 'Go', no 'Count of three'- he rushes her immediately, his blade tip coming within inches of her face as he swings. She lunges to the side and uses her whip, still doubled up, to snap him in the meat of his back leg, making it give and buying her enough time to twist away as she follow through with another stinger to the side of his neck.

Grunting, he jerks and swipes in a complete circle, winding her as the foam-covered tip of the blade plunges into her side. She needs the advantage of distance if she is going to be able to effectively use her whip. She twists back and watches for his approach: Almasy's style is aggressive- he does not wait, he rushes his opponent relentlessly until their defenses collapse. He relies on speed and intimidation to keep his enemy reeling, unable to set up an offense of their own. Seifer's goal is to keep combat close, to intimidate her and keep her on the run.

Quistis is also aware that knowing a strategy and knowing how to beat it are two completely separate things.

When he comes again, she darts away to the farthest corner of the mat, her whip over her head to wind it as her other hand comes up. His eye snags on the blue vapor of the ice spell brewing in her hand, giving her the opening she is looking for.

She goes for him perhaps a little more savagely than necessary, letting the whip circle for three complete revolutions before snapping it into the side of his face. Even with foam on the tip, the crack is enough to split the skin, and a small trickle of blood dashes down his cheek. He does flinches, but rushes her again. She knows he will not be fooled by the same trick twice, that he will risk the spell damage in favor of landing a physical blow.

He is a Hydra, but then, so can she be also.

It goes on this way for the entire hour. There may have been battles going around them, shouts and bursts of light- she doesn't see them. And if he doesn't cut down his casts as much as he should, if he pulls no punches as the foam-covered blade ricochets off her thigh, her side, her arm- it suits her fine. She is tired of being handled with kid gloves by these boys that seem to think she should be washing their sheets and polishing their swords instead of fighting at their sides.

After the class, exhausted, covered in sweat, and bleeding in more than a few places, they eat at the same lunch table, not saying a word.

They don't need to.

...

...

..

.

"Princess Trepe, the first blue mage at the Garden in ten years! Next Instructor Galen'll be rolling out the red carpet, and all lesser mortals will have to-"

"Stop it." She glares at him.

"Seriously, I thought the man was going to blow his load right there when you cast that Ultra Wave. Did you see the look on-"

"Stop!" she says again. Her cheeks are red.

He likes the blush on her cheeks, likes that he can put it there. "So, you'll save me a seat in the cafeteria?"

She pretends to consider a moment. "Well, I don't know, being that you're a lesser mortal, I may have to consider-"

He grins at her. "See you at lunch, _princess_."

She rolls her eyes at him as he jogs off towards the Quad. He is cocky, he is reckless, and he is irritating to boot.

She saves him a seat anyway.

...

...

...

They meet at precisely 8pm each night, (although they pretend it's only coincidence at first that they are there at the same time, in the same gym), each with their weapons taped for combat and each dressed in the black under armor that all Garden students are required to wear when sparring. The armor is light- it is intended to block the kind of magical damage that first year students are capable of casting, and can prevent around 25 HP worth of force from physical damage. Fortunately, or perhaps, unfortunately, both of them have long since passed that marker.

They are the youngest students in their class.

They don't talk- they never do, except for an occasional criticism (' keep your left side guarded' or 'don't put so much force into your uppercut'.

For the most part, the battle speaks for them in its native tongue of bruises and blood.

Seifer is a physical fighter- he is aggressive, he is light on his feet, and he gives virtually no quarter. Quistis, in addition to being Garden's top caster, is fast, fluid, and most of all, patient and analytical. She is content to prolong battle in order to learn an enemy's weakness, while Seifer always wants it finished quickly.

Quistis thinks this is because it gives him more time to gloat.

They spend hours in the Training Center, circling one another, panting for breath, lunging and thrusting and striking, and, rarely, falling back. Only when the last bell rings does the battle stop, and, bloody and bruised, they haul themselves off to bed without a word.

No mercy is asked, and none given. They dance in blood-splattered circles, testing each other's defenses and searching for weakness...all while trying not to reveal their own in the process.

It is, thinks Quistis, a poor substitute for dating, though not necessarily unlike it.

...

...

..

.

Quistis is sure that the girl's locker room adjacent to the gym is smaller than the boys. For economical reasons, why wouldn't it be?

Women make up roughly 20% of the active combat members in Garden- most of the others are involved with running it: lab techs, support staff, and those that push the paperwork. Quistis has a friend, Maira, that helps to run the Training Center Repopulation Program- Quistis herself has put in hours gathering T-Rexaur eggs to be raised in the hatchery.

Fortunately, T-Rexuars are not particularly attentive parents.

She does not envy Maira, most days, but there are times that she wishes she had chosen a life that did not constantly come with the territory of proving herself twice over.

The girls are changing and showering after the Battle Tactics class, talking amongst themselves. There is whispering and giggling, and two girls in the shower begin to throw the soap at one another, their shrieks echoing off the walls. Quistis quietly folds up her battle gear and places it in her locker, then changes back into her Garden uniform before going to the sink to wash her face.

Galanna, clad in just towel draped over her shoulders which just barely covers her breasts, takes up the sink next to Quistis. She is a beautiful 17 year old girl with curves to match the ruby red curls that spill down her naked back. Galanna could be a model, but then, Quistis thinks Galanna's tastes are better sated in bloodshed than fashion.

Quistis is nearly fifteen, and unsure of what to do with the curves that have been cropping up over the last year. She has tried to subdue them with lycra, with little success.

Nothing about Galanna is subdued. Rumor has it that she is no stranger to the Secret Area.

An ironic name, the Secret Area, thinks Quistis, seeing as every student and faculty member is well-aware of its existence. It is an indulgence of the powers that be, she supposes, a trade for the innocence they have already sacrificed to be here.

Their childhood for a place to neck.

"So," says Galanna, removing her toothbrush from her mouth, licking her lower lip. "You and Seifer Almasy."

Quistis looks at her, waiting for Galanna to finish her sentence. When it becomes obvious that the girl meant for it to end there, she asked, "Myself and Seifer what, exactly?"

Galanna laughs. "Are the rumors true?"

What rumors? Possibilities swim through her mind. The rumor that Seifer will become the youngest SeeD ever admitted? The rumor that he killed six Grats in a single stroke? These are probably all rumors that he has started himself...

"I'm sorry," said Quistis, bending over to scoop water over her face. "But which ones?"

The girl rolls her eyes. "Does he fuck like he fights?"

_There_ was one she hadn't heard.

"I don't..." she stammers, hating that she can feel her cheeks heat like a child. "I wouldn't know."

"Of course not, you're just a little girl, aren't you?" says the older girl, smiling in a patronizing way. "Maybe I'll find out for you."

Another bell rings, and suddenly, Quistis is all alone in the shower room, biting down on her toothbrush hard enough to make the bristles crunch.

_Does he fuck like he fights?_

Galanna's crude words tiptoe around in her head, creating questions were previously no questions lived.

She is unsure how to deal with these new queries, so she ignores them and focuses on brushing her teeth. She stares at her reflection with narrowed eyes.

_I'm not a little girl_, she thinks.

But that's exactly what she is.

She's a little girl that can channel gods, that can crack a whip hard enough to flay skin open to the bone, but she's a little girl just the same, still scared under her mettle.

Ironic, she thinks, that she can stare down a T-Rexaur and be the first to volunteer for every exercise, but the thought of being alone in the Secret Area with a boy still terrifies her more than anything.

...

...

...

..

.

"What'd you get on Green's exam?"

"A ninety six. You?"

She grins at him as he grits his teeth. "A ninety one."

Their sparring isn't only in the gym.

..

.

...

"What did you get on the casting practical?"

She glares at him. He knows damned well how she did...he'd been there when she'd stalled the ice spell. She is still waiting for the fist-sized blister to pop.

Damn damn damn, weeks of practice with the spell, and when it comes her turn, she chokes on it.

"A forty five out of fifty," she grumbles. "You?"

"Perfect marks, of course," he preens like a peacock. "How much you want to bet I cream you on the Guardian Force exam, too?"

She is fuming. "You're on. What, shall we say... the loser carries the winner's books for a day?"

He grins at her. "You think too small, princess. Make it a week."

"You've been calling me that ridiculous nickname for two years now." she says. "Aren't you getting a bit tired of it?"

"No, why, are you?" he asks innocently, dodging the swat she aims at his shoulder and laughing.

Though it's most often directed at her, she likes his laughter- it's loud and reckless and it fills up these grand halls.

It fills in spaces she didn't know were there.

...

..

.

"You took out all these books on purpose, you heartless bitch," he mutters, buried under 101 Guardian Forces, The Ashes of Pyrember, Fantastic Beasts and How to Kill Them, Junctioning 301: Mutualism or Parasitism?, The Art of War, and Critical Zones of the Brain and the Body.

Among others.

"I don't know what you're talking about," says Quistis, trying not to grin.

"You've seriously picked all these books because you wanted to read them tonight?"

"Don't be silly. I picked some of them because they had pretty spines." She is smiling now, and not trying to hide it. "You can put the books here, _slave_."

She would never admit it, but ordering him around gives her a certainthrill.

_Maybe that dominatrix rumor isn't **that** far off_

"I rest my case, you heartless wench," he seethes, glaring at her as he plops down the heavy load of books on the desk in front of him.

"Don't be such a sore loser," she tells him. "It's not my fault you and Quetzalcoatl didn't get along."

He glowers. "Who the fuck would get along with some magical parasite sucking on your brain?"

Seifer still has a twitch from the Guardian Force twisting around in his skull, crackling like a static worm, to say nothing of the booming migraine he'd suffered directly after the exam. The static came with the territory; the migraine was the result of him trying to hurry the damned thing up. Apparently Guardian Forces, like women, didn't like to be rushed. As a result of his very public spat with the GF, (in which he had apparently called the creature an 'overgrown static-cling chicken', among other things) Seifer has been eliminated from the select pool of SeeDs that are allowed to junction for missions. His junctioning days are over.

He tells himself it's no skin off his back as he prefers to work alone, anyway (and doesn't need some magical parasite picking at his brain while he sleeps), but now he has the pleasure of being Trepe's slave for the week, and she is taking full advantage of the opportunity.

Quistis shakes her head. "The week is almost over. Besides," she says, smiling, "All this heavy lifting is improving those scrawny little arms of yours."

It's a lie, of course- with all of his gunblade training, his arms are hard as tree branches threaded with tough muscle and sinew, but he's as vain as Narcissus, and it's fun to tease him.

It takes a moment for her insult to sink in. "Scrawny? I'll give you scrawny!" he yells, but she has already disappeared around the corner, leaving a peal of laughter behind her.

He tries to glare after her, but it's difficult. On the few occasions that she laughs, really laughs, he finds he wants to laugh with her.

...

...

..

.

Quistis sighs and turns a page in her textbook. Seifer, across the table, sighs every time she does it.

"Do you ever _stop_?" He blurts.

"Do _you_?" she retorts, not looking up from her page.

Another sigh is her response.

She looks up from her page. "The SeeD test is in less than a month," says Quistis, opening her SeeD manual and trying to memorize the regulation about appropriate magic force in a civilian territory.

"I know," mutters Seifer. "You tell me every damned day." He pushes the book closed. "So?"

"_So_, perhaps you should start studying." She opens the book again, only to have it closed, this time over her hand. Exhaling breath through her teeth, she gives him her best glare...the one that seems to have absolutely no effect on him whatsoever.

"Look, if we don't know it by now, we're never gonna learn it. Besides, you think they give a shit if we remember sub-article A under the enemy hostage clause?"

Her reaction is immediate and automatic- it's almost as if she can't help herself. "The taking of a hostage is permissible if and only if other avenues have been exhausted and the hostage taken is not considered a civilian by the standards of-"

"Stop!" he orders, pressing his hands to his temples. "Just stop. You're driving me nuts."

She looks petulant. "Then go and pester somebody else."

"No."

"Well, what _do_ you think I should be doing, if not this?" she asks, exasperated, tapping her pencil against the desktop.

"I don't know, but if you crawl any further up Instructor Galen's ass you're going to need a flashlight and a spelunking helmet to get back out."

"If you came all the way down to the library just to make fun of me-" she starts, putting her hand back on the book cover with the threat of opening it again.

"We should do something to celebrate us becoming SeeDs," he says quickly, ignoring her impending tirade. "Something to take our minds off of the exam."

"What do you have in mind?" she asks, setting down her pencil. "Are Rajin and Fujin coming, too? I suppose we could plan a small-"

No. Hell no. She's not planning anything, he thinks. If she has her way, they'll be having high tea with the instructional staff, turning into bed at 8 before things get too wild.

"Hello? Earth to Seifer?"

He appears not to have heard her. "We'll talk about it at lunch," he says, glancing over his shoulder. "Meet me in the garage tonight, after last bell. Dress in your civ clothes."

"Last bell? But-"

"Just save me a seat at lunch!" he calls, as he disappears around the corner.

...

...

..

.

Garden's SeeD Candidate Schedule for the first two years is a block schedule. On A days, both Seifer and Quistis eat with their respective friends (Seifer with Rajin and Fujin, and Quistis with Xu, Shira and Maira); when their schedule is divided, however, Seifer almost always eats with her in the cafeteria. Both Rajin and Fujin are a year behind and still on the hundred level classes and Xu has Combat Specialty with Instructor Marek on B days, so it's just the two of them. It's just as well that Xu is on a separate schedule, as Seifer and Xu mix about as well as oil and water on the best of days. Quistis thinks it's probably because their insecurities are incompatible (and the fact that they tear at those insecurities to no end when placed in a room together.) Cats and dogs, and Quistis isn't sure which one is the cat and which one is the dog, but she tries to keep them apart for her sanity more than theirs.

Seifer and Quistis have fallen into the habit of eating lunch together, then walking to The Psychology of Battle with Instructor Arlin, where Quistis is expected to kick Seifer periodically to keep him awake.

Today at lunch, however, the seat she's always saved for him is empty, and remains empty until she eventually relinquishes guardianship to a first year cadet that does nothing but stare at her and try to shove food in his mouth at the same time, which results in him missing his target a good many times and slopping gravy down the front of his uniform.

Her eyes search the cafeteria-

- then she immediately wonders why she cares.

Seifer is loud, obnoxious, and over-confident, and when he isn't making her roll her eyes, he is usually laughing at her expense. Still, she finds herself missing the stories about his over-inflated achievements, and his grandiose (if naive) plans for the future.

She also misses his impersonations of Instructor Green.

She hadn't realized how much she enjoys his company until she doesn't have it, it seems.

The first year cadet has once again missed his mouth completely. Tired of feeling like a bug under a microscope, Quistis clears her tray and puts it away.

She is confused, more than anything- he'd told her to save a seat today, hadn't he? Then again, she'd junctioned Shiva all morning before passing the guardian along to Shira. They play Junction/Un-Junction like a relay race all through the week on Instructor Green's orders as part of his class. Having a high affinity with Shiva, Quistis has noticed only a few problems with her memory and some slight headaches, but it was never her short-term memory that had suffered before...

As she rounds the corner for her next class, she sees her missing lunch partner. He is standing in the hallway, one hand on his hip, the other balanced on the wall. Underneath that arm is Galanna Valentine, leaning in close, smiling as Seifer slips something into her hand. She whispers something in his ear than walks down the hallway, winking at Quistis as she goes.

Small loyalties are all Quistis has in her small world, and for some reason, she feels betrayed.

Quistis tells herself that the roiling in her stomach is due to the cafeteria's questionable version of Chicken a la King, and certainly not due to those Unanswerable Questions With No Good Answers bobbing up again.

She quashes them and kicks Seifer extra had to keep him awake in Instructor Arlin's class.

...

...

...

...

..

.

"Hey."

"Hey."

"Hey. _Princess_!"

She finally turns around in her seat. "I told you not to call me that!" she hisses. "Now shut up!"

She glances back at the BlueBoard, where Instructor Green is droning on again about 'GF relations'. It is a consensus among the student body that Instructor Green should just fuck Shiva, die of hypothermia, and get it over with.

"Hey!"

"Shut up! You're going to get us in trouble." She whispers furiously at him.

He kicks her chair. She folds her arms and ignores him.

"_Quistis_!"

Desperate measures, if he is using her actual name. The corners of her mouth twitch.

Shira Anglave giggles. Dirk Chevis makes horrible kissing noises until Seifer turns and kicks him hard in the shin. Both Dirk and Seifer feign intense concentration when Instructor Green turns from the board to regard them suspiciously.

"Quistis," he says again, once Instructor Green has turned around.

"_For Hyne's sake, what is it_!" she whispers furiously, turning in her seat to face him.

Dirk Chevis is still clutching his shin, mouthing curses at Seifer.

He seems caught aback to have her full attention, all at once. "...are you coming tonight?"

"It all depends on-"

He scowls. "Depends on what? You're either comin' or not, it ain't a trick question or anything!"

There goes that stomach twist again. "Why don't you ask Galanna instead?"

He frowns. "The hell would I ask her for?"

She turns around, ignoring him again, although he looks genuinely perplexed at the question.

Scowling, he tears out a corner of his Junctioning textbook and scribbles a note before balling it up and throwing it at her. It catches the side of her neck before dropping to the ground. Shoulder blades tensing with her temper, she nevertheless snatches the note and smoothes it open on her desk. It reads:

_"Why the hell would I ask Galanna to come? Girls like her are only good for one thing."_

Narrowing her eyes, she scribbles back. _"And by that logic, which thing am **I** good for?"_

The return note hits him in the eye. Cheeks reddening, he quickly scrawls another message. This time she catches it.

_"What the hell crawled up your ass?"_

Fuming, she crumples up the note and throws it at him. "You-"

"Miss Trepe. Mr. Almasy. Is there something of greater importance than Compatibility statistics that I should be aware of?" Instructor Green is wearing his 'We are not amused' face, a look which makes him look slightly constipated and usually ends badly for the recipient.

Everyone else in the class is wearing their best "Busted!" face (except for James Marek, who is wearing the half-sympathetic, half-relieved "Better you than me" face, as he has just been woken up from his daily in-class nap.)

"I've asked you a question, I believe," says Instructor Green.

"N-no sir," stammers Quistis quickly.

"No sir," says Seifer smoothly, leaning back in his seat.

"Need I remind you that your SeeD exam is in less than one month?"

"No, sir." This time, it is only Quistis that speaks up. Seifer is already staring into the distance.

"Fifty laps around the Quad after class, both of you. And after that, I think a three page dissertation on the benefits of a single junction vs. a multiple junction is in order. Since you so obviously don't feel the need to pay attention, I can only imagine this material to be so beneath you that writing a paper will be mere child's play. I look forward to being dazzled by your profound insight."

"So do I," muttered Seifer.

Instructor Green's face is now as red as a tomato. "And for that, Mr. Almasy, you will both be scrubbing the 1st floor men's toilets tonight. With your own toothbrushes."

"But-" stammers Quistis with something akin to panic.

"Add to that the 1st floor women's toilet as well, Miss Trepe. Perhaps you'd like to go for the faculty's as well? I must confess I've been missing that pine-fresh scent of a perfectly waxed floor."

A low murmur rises up in the class, punctuated by giggles. Quistis's face is as pale as a ghost, and she sinks a little in her seat, looking near tears. Seifer, however, maintains a stony expression, his arms crossed.

Hearing the giggles, Instructor Green turns on the rest of the class. "What are the rest of you grinning about?" He barks. "Do you want to join them?"

Smiles and snickers quickly flatten out into a somber silence befitting a funeral procession.

_So much for allies in arms_, thinks Quistis bitterly.

"Good. Now, as I was saying, there appears to be a direct correlation between vitality and compatibility statistics when dealing with Guardian Forces, to say nothing of the speed advantage in the summons-"

Neither of them looks at the other for the rest of the class.

...

...

...

"So..you going to...help me...with the paper?" he asks her on their thirty-second lap, his sentences broken by his breathing. She is doing her best to ignore him, a strategy not made easier by the fact that he has taken to keeping pace with her. Instructor Green is watching them from a bench, grading papers. _The colossal prick._

"_Help _you?" she pants, glaring at him as her ponytail swishes from side to side with her gait. "Why on earth would I help you? You're the one... that got us into this mess! I've never...had detention in my life!"

"You worry too muchwhat people think, Trepe." He says. " Besides, what're you...talking about? If you hadn't ignored me, we wouldn't have-!"

"I wasn't _ignoring_ you!" she lies. "We were in class!"

"If you would've...had the courtesy to turn around the...first time, none of this would've happened."

"Courtesy?" She glared at him. "I'm being lectured on...courtesy from the guy...kicking my chair for half an hour...throwing wads of paper in my hair, getting me into-"

"See? You admit it- you _were_ ignoring me." He looks both slightly winded and smug.

"Only because you make it...so worthwhile," she huffed.

He grins. "Now, princess-"

Some men, she is sure, call women 'Princess' to sound endearing. This is no such man. His every endearment is gritty like sandpaper, made to scrape rather than soothe.

"I told you to stop calling me that!" she snaps.

They are drawing stares. It is nothing new to see Cadet Almasy running laps for one infraction or another, but it is quite another to see Quistis Trepe, model student, keeping pace beside him.

"What's wrong...with being a princess?" he asks, grinning.

"Nothing at all...if you need rescuing," she snaps, then speeds up.

This time, he lets her pull ahead.

"See you in the men's bathrooms tonight, princess!" he calls after her, making the surrounding students erupt into laughter.

Quistis's fists ball as she runs, but she knows that giving her classmate a matching pair of black eyes is not going to endear her to the faculty, and she is already hurting for favor.

...

...

...

...

...

..

.

"Knew you couldn't stay away," he says, grinning, as she approaches him. It is after hours in Garden, and not a soul roams the halls save for the Shumi, a few students sneaking into the Secret Area, and of course, any students unlucky enough to be serving detentions, which, from her observations, seems to include only them.

"Did you know that in prison, a toothbrush can be carved into a shank and used to sever a man's jugular vein?" she asks, kneeling down beside him on the men's restroom floor. She has to hike up her skirt to get on her knees, and he watches her do it out of the corner of his eye.

She is fifteen, long-limbed and still a little gangly, but she is pretty now and someday, she will be stunning. She is the subject and scrutiny of many of the boys in their class, though she mostly ignores them.

_But not him,_ he thinks.

She saves him seats at lunch, kicks him awake in class (perhaps harder than necessary), and trains with him in the Training Center almost every night. He is not sure why he likes her attention so much- whether because she awards it so seldom, or because she's so much fun to tease.

_Probably both. _

The women's JC uniform is not at all suited to work of this type...or running, or slaying beasts...or high-kicking...absently Quistis wonders just what the men who ordered the women's uniforms had in mind. She resists in relaying her misery to Seifer, who would probably delight in telling her '101 Uses for Garden Uniform Skirts', none of them appropriate.

It does not surprise her that Seifer is here ahead of her, dutifully scrubbing the floor with a toothbrush. (Although she'd be willing to bet that it isn't his. In fact, she does a double-take to make sure it isn't _hers_.) Though Seifer balks at authority, he understands it as a necessary evil for accomplishing his goals, and though he struggles, he keeps his harness on.

She wants to cry when she sees that the boy's bathroom is indeed almost twice the size of the girls, which is large itself to begin with. Still, it looks rather like the girl's bathroom. She isn't sure what she expected. Jock straps swinging from the ceiling? Half-naked pin-up girls taped to the walls? She considers asking Seifer if it's always like this.

Instead, she takes out a new toothbrush she's purchased from the canteen (punishment or no, there is no way in the island closest to Heaven that she is using her own.) She really hopes that Instructor Green is not going to make them brush their teeth in front of him when this is all over, because she has only been scrubbing two minutes and already a coarse black curly hair is tangled in her bristles. And suddenly, she wants to cry again. She has never had the slightest infraction in her life, and here she is, scrubbing floors with a horrible boy that lies and gets her into trouble and tells her to save him a seat for lunch and then does Hyne-knows-what with the resident Garden bicycle-

She isn't sure what bothers her more- that she's stuck scrubbing bathroom floors all night, or that she's actually _more_ upset about being stood up for lunch.

This idiot has gotten her priorities all messed up, and she isn't exactly certain what type of idiot that makes _her_.

"Think Instructor Green'll take time out from his rigorous schedule of humping Summons and actually check on us?" asks Seifer.

She does not respond, but makes a face as she encounters a questionable white substance by one of the toilets.

_Men are disgusting._

"What, you're still not talking to me for whatever imaginary thing I did to piss you off?" he asks, glaring at her.

Quistis has learned that the worst punishment for Almasy is not actual punishment itself, but being ignored. A vain creature by nature, he will take any sort of recognition over not having any at all.

After another hour of his sulking, though, she finds that she is bored as well and decides to take pity on both of them. By this time, he is scrubbing sullenly on the opposite end of the bathroom, completely silent. And it's a little funny that a boy that can fight like a demi-god sulks like a child.

A smile hints at the corner of her mouth as she thinks of what to say.

"Knock knock," she says, not looking up from her scrubbing.

He glares up at her. "You finally decide to talk to me, and it's some fucking knock-knock joke?"

"Knock knock," she says again stubbornly.

He rolls his eyes. "Who's there?" He relents. Her knock-knock jokes are awful.

"Boo." she says, trying hard not to laugh now.

"Boo, who?"

"Don't cry, Seifer," she says, "It's only a joke."

"Hyne, your jokes fucking stink, you know that?" But he's trying not to smile, too, and she notices that he moves a little closer to her as he scrubs the next tile.

"Fine, you're such a great comedian, you tell one," she says.

"All right," he replies, sitting back on his haunches. "There's these two guys out hunting Cactuar, right? All of a sudden, one of the guys drops over, looking really pale. His eyes roll back in his head and he doesn't seem to be breathing. His buddy panics and calls a Med-Evac, and he says to the operator, 'You gotta help me! My friend is dead!'"

Quistis pauses in her scrubbing to listen.

"The operator says in a calm voice 'Okay, I can help you. But first, let's make sure he's dead.' There's silence on the other end for a moment, and then a shot is heard. The guy comes back on the phone and says, 'Okay, now what?'"

Quistis groans, but she smiles. "I still like mine better."

"You would," he says.

They are closer now, nearly shoulder to shoulder as they scrub.

"You missed a spot," says Seifer, peering over her shoulder.

"I did not!" she replies indignantly. "If anyone missed a spot, it's-"

She trails off as she looks up from her work and directly into his eyes. She knows they are green, of course, but up close (when did he get so close?) they are sea green with flecks of amber, rimmed with a darker emerald hue. He doesn't say anything, just looks back at her. His shoulder is warm as it presses into hers, and she has never been this close to a boy before-

"And how are we progressing?" a voice startles them. Quistis nearly loses her grip on her toothbrush. They both scramble to their feet at attention, Seifer holding his hands behind his back.

"Fine, sir," says Quistis. "We're nearly finished here."

"Good." he says. "And when you've finished the girl's toilets, you can finish the faculty's as well, after which time I want you both directly off to your dormitories. You both have a paper to write, after all." The Instructor pauses at the doorway. "And no cutting corners. I want to be able to see my reflection in every crack and crevice of this bathroom."

"Oh, he'll be able to see his reflection, all right," mutters Seifer after the Instructor has gone. "In the toilets, no problem, the prick-" Still muttering, he pulls out a small paper bag from his pocket.

"What's that?" asks Quistis. "Poison for Instructor Green?"

"Even better," replies Seifer, pulling out a glass bottle from the slim paper bag. "Odine's Firewhiskey. 100 proof. Apparently before the guy became a famous scientist, he was kind of a drunk. Well, he probably still is, but now he invents shit on top of-"

"Alcohol?" says Quistis, her eyebrows raised. "Seifer, you know you're not allowed to have alcohol on school grounds! It's cause for expulsion from the SeeD program!" A pause. "However did you get it, anyway?"

"Galanna's dating some bartender in Balamb. She gets pretty much whatever she wants, and, for a fee, is happy to distribute her wealth to the student body."

If the rumors are true, Galanna enjoys distributing more than liquor to the student body, but Quistis keeps her mouth shut as she processes this new information.

_Seifer, slipping Galanna something in the hallway..._

the truth dawns on Quistis, and instead of wanting to scold him, for some reason she feels like smiling.

So she does.

"Anyway, it was supposed to be for our celebration, but this works, too." Unscrewing the cap, Seifer takes a drink. "You want some?"

She eyes the flask as if it's the reincarnation of Pandora's box. "I-we can't. It's against the rules."

"Yeah, well, some rules are made to be broken." He grins at her as he takes another gulp. "Let me guess, Little Miss Perfect doesn't drink."

He's right of course. Little Miss Perfect doesn't drink, she doesn't stay out past Garden curfew...then again, Little Miss Perfect doesn't get detentions, either.

Maybe, she thinks, Little Miss Perfect isn't so Perfect after all.

She wonders why that thought feels so liberating when it should feel so terrible.

She doesn't know whether it's that thought or the superior smirk on his face that makes her grab the bottle from him and take a big gulp. It's only a small bottle of alcohol, anyway- what harm can it do?

In later years, she'll come to better understand liquor proofs.

Immediately her insides are on fire. She chokes and sputters, eyes watering- absently, she feels him thump her hard on the back.

She's about to thank him for her concern when she realizes he's laughing at her.

"Whoa, Trepe, it's not orange juice! Holy hell!" he says, taking the bottle back from her and taking a longer swig, not to be outdone. He pauses. "Did they have strawberries for lunch today?"

"Strawberry cheesecake," she says, still trying to clear her throat and swallow the remainder of the awful stuff that seems lodged in her throat.

"That's it," he says, licking his lips as he hands the bottle back.

The fact that he is tasting her lips from the bottle causes something strange to squirm inside of her that isn't only the fear of things beyond her experience.

Squeezing her eyes shut, she takes a smaller sip. Her sinuses are still aflame, but she doesn't choke this time.

"Better?" he asks.

"No! Hyne, what is this stuff? Turpentine?" she gasps.

"Tch. It'd better not be, for what she charged me," he says, examining the bottle.

And it goes on like that for awhile- they pass the bottle back and forth between each other, until Seifer regards her a long moment, says she's had enough, and polishes the rest of the bottle off himself. He looks immediately sorry that he's done it.

Quistis, meanwhile feels a little lightheaded, and strangely carefree, like the mountain of rules and responsibilities she's been heaping onto her back have all sort of slid to the floor in a relaxed little puddle. This, she thinks, is what other students do with their time- they laugh, they break rules, they have fun; but not her, no, never her, not Miss Perfect, she sets her alarm clock and writes in her planner and toes the line wherever they see fit to draw it.

And look where it's gotten her- headfirst into detention without a backward glance by that prick Instructor Green. Perhaps rules are only as good as the people that make them.

She sets down the toothbrush.

"Get up," she says, suddenly.

He eyes her. "Why?"

"Just do it," she says. "And step back. Way back."

She has some ice spells junctioned, and as she flicks her wrist, they rattle to life, making her arm feel like it's been slammed in a freezer.

Her heart hammers beneath her ribs- one of the only times she feels alive like this is when the magic surges through her. This is probably because it's the only time she feels reckless- she does not have a complete handle on the magic yet and every summon, every cast is a calculated risk.

She's been studying the water types in Blue Magic, and though what she really needs is a Water Crystal to learn the complete spell, she's assembled a kind of cheap knock-off in the meantime. It's not a Limit Break, not even close, but she thinks it will do the trick nicely in this case. Enough of the Ice summon to supply the bulk of the cast, a little fire to melt it and heat it...and...

Her muscles spasm as she casts. It's a little overkill, but then, she's still feeling a little dizzy.

She steps back. The bathroom is doused in a heavy spray of hot water from top to bottom, and faint streams of steam are rising from the walls, sinks and counters.

Normally, students don't hybridize magic in this way- there's little point. If you want to ice an enemy, you ice them. If you want to burn them to a crisp, you use a Fire variant. It's neither advisable nor time/cost effective to blend spells, because you can easily get killed in the time it takes to combine them. In her studies and in her daily life, Quistis is intensely practical, but as a Blue Mage when it comes to magic, Quistis is more interested in what she can do rather than what's actually deemed prudent.

She turns to regard Seifer, her shoes a little wet and still more than a little tipsy on her feet.

Seifer, meanwhile, is looking at her as if he's never seen her before. "You're full of surprises, aren't you?"

She doesn't answer. She's surprised the hell out of herself.

"Why the hell didn't you do that before?"

She shrugs. "Hurry up and help me cast aero, then let's get the rest of this done. You have to write a paper, after all."

"You wrote yours already?"

"Of course," she says. "You might want to cite Rolphus Manger's point about every simbiotic relationship being somewhat slanted in a single organism's favor, although you could easily make an argument either way as to the greater advantage enjoyed by- "

As she drones on, Seifer rolls his eyes.

The more she changes, he thinks, the more she stays the same.

...

...

...

Even with Quistis's new and improved method, it takes them another hour to tackle both the faculty and the girl's first floor bathroom. By the time they make their way over to the dormitories, they are tired and their shoes are soaked enough to squeak.

Seifer insists on walking her to her room, whether out of chivalry or to make sure she doesn't break her leg over a potted plant is anyone's guess. She is still a little tipsy. Quistis Trepe, model student, tipsy and out after curfew. She doesn't know whether she wants to giggle or be horrified at her behavior. She settles for a lopsided smile instead.

"So, tomorrow," says Seifer. "Meet me by the garage after curfew."

She wants to rail at him that the SeeD exams are in just over two weeks, that they're already skating on thin ice with Instructor Green, that what they're already doing is a huge mistake, but what she says is, "Why?"

"We won't get into trouble, if that's what you're worried about. Don't you trust me?" He takes her hand, and for an instant, she isn't sure what he intends to do with it. He could twist it behind her back and pin her into the wall, could take the arm and use the momentum to flip her- but he does nothing, he just holds it, and her own instinct to flip him passes.

"Is that a trick question?" she asks, leaning up against her door frame. The hallway is still spinning a little. His hand is warm.

"Could be. Dress civ. I'll meet you there." He bows low, smirking, and his lips brush her hand. "Night, princess."

Instead of correcting him, she rolls her eyes, then frowns when she sees him walking the opposite way. "Isn't your room down-"

"Yeah, it is." He says. "I've gotta return Instructor Green's toothbrush first."

She can't quite figure if he's kidding or not.

_Probably not._

She stares at her hand for a moment before she remembers she's standing alone in the hallway, and lets herself into her room.

...

...

...

..

.

Quistis's civilian clothes consist of a black pencil skirt, a white blouse, a pair of khakis and a dark blue pea coat. She plucks a spider web from her khakis and thinks that she really needs to get out more.

She has to resort to drastic measures and borrow from Xu's closet, all the while wondering exactly what the hell she's doing.

"All this time I've tried to get you out of here, and you pick _now_ to go?" Xu watches her comb through her closet, her arms folded. "If it's with that Almasy kid, don't even tell me where you're going. When your mutilated body washes ashore, I want to be able to tell them I don't know anything."

Rolling her eyes, Quistis holds up yet another blouse before Xu becomes frustrated and shoulders her out of the way. Muttering, Xu selects a stone-washed jean skirt and a short-sleeved powder blue t-shirt with a scooped neck, throwing them at her as she sits on the bed. Xu is slightly shorter than Quistis and the shirt has to stretch in the chest a little more than Quistis would like, but the outfit is serviceable.

The older girl scrutinizes her roommate from the perspective of experience as Quistis twists and turns in front of the mirror, trying to pull down the skirt. Xu doesn't trust Almasy: the little shit is cocksure, reckless, and narcissistic to a T.

However, if he can nudge Quistis out of her shell, well, she can't despise him (entirely).

At 15 years old, Xu knows for a fact Quistis has never been to a party, never held hands with a boy, much less kissed him, and has never snuck out of Garden for a night in the city. And yet Quistis can map out all the critical zones in the body, and only last week broke a Geezard's spine like a matchstick with her whip. She is terribly ahead of her age in some ways, and painfully behind in others.

And though Xu wishes her friend all the fun that accompanied the risks in a social life, she certainly doesn't wish her the heartache that sometimes tags along.

The kind that is sure to tag along with a careless boy like this.

Xu squints at Quistis for a minute. "You're not going out like that, are you?"

Quistis turns, and her expression falls. "This is a big mistake, I know, it's a bad idea, I shouldn't-"

Xu rolls her eyes. "Who said anything about it being a bad idea? I've been trying to get you out since you became a SeeD candidate." says her friend, grabbing the ponytail in her hair and pulling it out. "Hair like _that_, you wear it down. Now c'mere, you're a mess."

Quistis submits.

Fifteen minutes later, Xu smiles at Quistis as she slips out the door, watching her as she hurries down the hall.

The girl is bound to be shit at sneaking out...perhaps a distraction is in order.

"Quistis." She hisses.

Quistis stops, frowning at her and silently mouthing, '_what_?'

"Whatever you hear, keep going," says Xu, then shuts the door on Quistis's bewildered expression.

...

...

...

...

...

..

.

The garage is as silent as a graveyard. She weaves between the cars, her blood pounding in her ears, watching for movement.

She should not have come, she thinks. She is breaking about seven Garden rules less than a month before the SeeD trial, and if she gets caught by Instructor Green, who knows what type of foul thing she'll have to clean next-

Something clamps down over her mouth and she instantly turns, leading with her elbow to wind her attacker, her mind already following up on a snap with the heel of her hand into the soft cartilage of the nose and-

-she meets air.

The hand is removed, and suddenly Seifer Almasy is standing in front of her, grinning. She almost feels bad that she was about to break his nose.

_Almost_.

"Didn't want you screaming, Trepe. Scared, were you?"

"Of course not," she lies, crossing her arms. "You startled me, that's all. What're you doing, skulking around?"

"Didn't know who it was." Seifer is wearing a pair of baggy grey cargo pants and a black shirt with what Quistis guesses is some sort of band name emblazoned across the front.

Quistis wants to know exactly what he would have done if it was an Instructor, but keeps her mouth shut.

"Well, let's go," he says.

"Aren't Rajin and Fujin coming?"

"Nah," he says. "They're probably asleep. Why, you wanna go wake 'em up?"

"And sneak down the hallway again?" she asks. "No way. How are we going to get out of here, by the way?"

Seifer hasn't quite worked out how to get past the sleep-deprived guard they've newly stationed at the entrance yet, but he doesn't dare tell Quistis that, lest she see his plan for the poorly constructed thing that is and march directly back to her dormitory.

"Well, we're going to have to hoof it; we can't take one of the cars-"

Suddenly, the sharp beep of an alarm sounds inside. Both Seifer and Quistis whip their heads around-

"Disturbance in dormitory sector A reported. All available personnel report for inspection." It is the monotone voice of one of the Shumi. In a moment, all monitors will be swarming the dormitories...leaving none outside.

"Xu." mutters Quistis.

"Huh?"

"Nothing," she says.

He grabs her arm. "Perfect. Let's go!"

And before she can protest, before she can process the very real insanity in all this, he's dragging her along, helping to vault her over Garden's gates.

He finally releases her arm, and they walk in silence through the fields. He doesn't seem worried about monsters, and really, neither is she. They're junctioned constantly now, and she's well-stocked enough to take on anything the Balamb plains have to offer.

She _thinks_, anyway.

After a minute, it occurs to her to actually ask where they're going.

"That Summer Solstice Carnival's in town," he says. "You ever been?"

Of course he knows the answer to that. These past years, her world has only been as big as Garden's walls.

"No." she says. "Am I dressed appropriately?"

He shrugs. "It's a carnival, not high tea." Really, her outfit is more than serviceable, particularly the scooped neck on the shirt.

"Oh, okay."

"Come on," he says, grabbing her hand as they run through the gates, and she feels a rush of adrenaline, as if all that confidence of his is infectious. She even forgets to glance behind her.

The carnival is like nothing Quistis has ever seen before. Seifer insists on riding each ride- she laughs and shrieks when he rocks the seat on the Ferris wheel and almost gets them kicked off, nearly throws up on the whirl-o-matic, and blushes when their bodies slam together on the spin-o-whirl, Seifer insisting that they have to lean their weight into each turn to maximize the spinning. Seifer is obviously a veteran of the Summer Solstice Festival, and she is reassured that he must be very good at sneaking out and sneaking back in, as his record concerning truancy is squeaky clean.

Seifer buys chili dogs and she treats for funnel cakes, and they both nearly get kicked off of the bumper cars when she pins Seifer's car to the rail so hard it sends showers of sparks scattering across the arena.

They play the ring toss and even have their palms read. Quistis has a long lifeline and a daunting task in her future, and Seifer apparently has a mysterious woman to meet in his. Rolling their eyes, they duck out of the tent, laughing.

The Summer Solstice Festival is packed full of noisy, sweaty people that were probably already half-drunk before noon, filled with the dampening, heavy smell of fried foods and beer and the subtle toilet bowl cleanser stink of the port-a-potties that line the gates, and strung with incessantly blinking lights and irritating noises from the games.

She has never had so much fun.

Quistis tries her hand at the bazaar of games, and finds that she isn't very good at them. Seifer, however, wins an overlarge stuffed cactuar and a small silver keychain. He gives the stuffed cactuar to one of the kids that orbits the games like a hopeful moon. Watching Seifer shake his head as the kid grapples with a stuffed animal roughly the same size as he is, stumbling away and muttering his thanks, she smiles. Seifer gives the keychain to her, and when he grabs her hand to lead her into the House of Mirrors, he doesn't let go.

The House of Mirrors is a veritable maze of aluminum glass and bare bulbs that swing and hum in the dark. At first, Quistis laughs at the distortions, fat Quistis, skinny Quistis- Seifer leans close and makes a face in one that seems to distort one's reflections like a rippling pond. After awhile, however, she comes to a mirror that is not distorted, and she is suddenly looking at a stranger. This girl, with long blond hair that falls around her face , the skirt and just the tiniest bit of lip gloss swiped across her face, who is she?

Is she the real Quistis Trepe, or is the real Quistis Trepe back at Garden?

She thinks she likes this Quistis just a little bit more. This Quistis smiles more, laughs more, and doesn't care as much what others think.

(except for him, maybe.)

She must be lagging behind, because Seifer grabs her hand again and pulls her around a corner. Her laughter echoes through the wide room.

He laughs with her.

.

..

..

.

"That was fun," she says as they jog silently down the halls. They are both tired, sweaty, and smell like the grease and grit of the fair, but they are also breathless with laughter, still humming from their previous exhilaration.

"Yeah." He grabs her hand, suddenly, and jerks her into a doorway.

Her eyes adjust quickly to the dark as she looks around.

It is the Secret Area.

"Is this the-" she looks around. "But we can't be in here, they'll-"

"You worry too much Trepe," he says, and then he surprises her again-

-by kissing her.

It is her first kiss, and as soon as her brain can catch up to both the novelty and the sensations, she closes her eyes and puts her hands on his shoulders, where (she thinks) they are supposed to go.

His lips are soft for all his aggression- this close, she can smell him, feel the heat from his skin, and she can't ever remember being this close to someone before without trying to hurt them. Until this moment, she didn't realize how much she wanted (needed) human contact, but now that she has tasted it, she is starving. Her fingers tighten around his shoulders and she presses her body into his (warm, hard, and alive) and she breaks contact with his lips just long enough to gasp his name.

Not '_Almasy_' this time.

Just '_Seifer_'.

He likes his name on her lips almost as much as he likes the press of her body (breasts, belly, thighs) against his. His hands go around her waist and pull her closer, and suddenly she is flush against the training center wall, her hands fisted in his shirt and his body rubbing up against hers.

And suddenly, this thing she's never had before, never known- she wants more of it.

They're both clumsy- hands hesitate and at first, their mouths don't know quite how to fit together, but soon even the hesitation fades and she can feel his tongue sweeping her mouth, his hands traveling up and down her back and only just hesitating at the hem of her t-shirt.

It's like Instructor Green's seminar on hand-to-hand combat, except her thighs aren't trying to compress his windpipe this time, and the stokes of his hands aren't aimed towards her kidneys. If they are fumbling teenagers they are also mercenaries, and nothing about their movements are gentle- they are as harsh and demanding as every other aspect of their lives.

It's just like fighting, and she gives him no quarter. Anything he can do, she can do better, and if he expected some shy virginal sacrifice, he's certainly not complaining about what he's gotten instead.

She pulls up his shirt and puts her hands underneath, tracing the skin (surprisingly soft) and outlining the muscles of his stomach with the tip of her thumb (hard and twisting under her touch). He grunts and jerks his head when she reaches the bulge in his pants, and what is she supposed to do with this?

She hesitates, but then his hips rock into her hand and she grasps at him, her touch similar to her own shy explorations when she's alone in her room.

He tears his lips from hers and buries his teeth into her neck, and though she should be turned off (nice girls in the books she reads don't let boys touch them this way, perhaps a chaste kiss or two after several bouquets of flowers and boxes of chocolates), she gasps and rocks her hips hard into his, and he's trembling now, fingers just a little unsteady as they trail up her thigh and skim the edges of her panties, and she twists against him in search of any kind of relief to the searing pressure that's pulsing through her-

She wants this, wants him, and the consequences of what they are doing are the furthest thing from her mind-

Light swinging in the corner of her vision, and the world, which had previously condensed into Seifer's hands and mouth, now widens back into the Training Center, and there's something coming towards them-

"Seifer," she whispers, but he only drags down one side of her underwear, muttering something into her neck, and she wants to weep with frustration, but she repeats his name again.

This time, he surfaces, his eyes narrowed at the interruption. "What?" He sounds out of breath.

"Someone else is in here." She says, and he turns around and curses when he realizes that she's right.

"Come on," he says, grabbing her hand again and pulling her out of the room before Instructor Green's flashlight can sweep across them.

..

.

.

..

.

They don't talk on the way back to the dormitory wing, and Quistis can feel doubts sinking their teeth into the happiness she'd felt only minutes before, making it feel dull and flat.

_Does he think it was a mistake?_

_Was she a terrible kisser...or was it his first kiss, too?_

_Is she now condemned to the category enjoyed by girls like Galanna Valentine, only good for one thing?_

He stops at her door, and for a moment, he looks awkward, glancing up and down the hall, staring at their joined hands. But then that uncertainty vanishes from his face, and he leans in, pressing a kiss against her cheek.

"Night...princess," he says.

As he jogs down the hall, she watches him go.

She thinks perhaps being a 'princess' might not be so bad after all.

.

..

.

The next few weeks are a kind of dream neither one could have ever hoped to have dreamt before. They train hard, they sit through their classes and take dutiful notes, but there are now the accidental touches, the lunches eaten with their shoulders touching, the looks in class and the stolen moments in the Training Center. that are a world separate from any they have ever had.

They have mornings to look forward to, and a waiting affection that neither can ever remember having before. Quistis has never had someone waiting for her, making plans with her, and Seifer revels in the smile she wears only for him, the way she meets his lips as eagerly as he when he pulls her aside between classes. He guards her affection like a dragon wraps around its gold, and Quistis soaks up his attentions like a plant long in the dark.

Sometimes they sit in the Secret Area, just holding hands and talking.

Sometimes, they do much more.

They should have known it would be too good to last.

.

..

.

"I thought you'd be happy for me," she says, standing in the doorway of his dormitory.

At one time he would have pulled teeth to have her standing in his room, looking at him imploringly- now he wants her nowhere near him.

She looks both wounded and warmongering, a duality about her that has always fascinated him about her. She can demolish a house with a well-placed cast, can break a man's neck with a flick of her wrist, but underneath, underneath she has an underbelly of made of tissue paper.

It's dangerous knowledge with him; he's always had the dual desire to protect her or tear through her.

Currently, he's leaning towards the latter.

"Happy for you? What, happy that you've joined the ranks of Garden's elite lap dogs?" he snaps.

"Which, until a day ago, you were trying to join yourself, as I recall!" she shoots back at him. "If you could have only followed orders-"

"Followed orders of that simpering moron Seagrey, who wanted to lead our offensive uphill?" he spits.

"If you haven't noticed, Seifer, that simpering moron Seagrey was among the names called today," she replies nastily.

He glares at her, and she looks immediately sorry. She takes a tentative step towards him.

"Seifer, it's fine, next time, when you retake the exam-"

"You just can't wait to be one of them, can you?" he sneers. "All 'yes sirs' and salutes already, already on your knees just gagging for an order to follow. Then again, I already know how good you can be on your knees, maybe you should just-"

It's out before he can stop it, and he regrets it instantly, but then her hand is sweeping across his cheek with a resounding crack, and there's no taking that back, either.

She's hurt him, hurt his pride, and he's done the same, and that's all they really have, isn't it? Not a world that was handed to them, but the world they've build for themselves, the fragile shell of their identity, their integrity.

She's breathing hard and there are tears in her eyes. He wants to apologize, wants to hold onto her and say that he didn't mean it, but there is a wall so thick between them now it's almost visible. Hell, it is visible- she's wearing it. He wants to ruin this for her; wants to drag her down so they're on the same level again, so that he can reach her, reach out to her-

"Enjoy your ivory tower, princess," he says, and he spits the last word with as much venom as he can muster. It isn't much, but judging by the crumpled look on her face, it's enough. She turns and walks away, and he thinks he catches her wiping that ornate sleeve across her eyes as she walks away.

The sight stings worse than the right side of his face, and that's saying something.

.

..

.

..

.

Xu pats Quistis's trembling back as she sobs, her comforting touch both clumsy and unpracticed.

Quistis doesn't say anything.

But then, she doesn't have to.

Xu knows it's the boy, knows it's Almasy. She knew the second Seifer flunked his SeeD exam and Quistis passed with flying colors that it was over, would be over between them- knew that all that tenuous happiness, those fragile smiles of Quistis's would come tumbling down like a house of cards. And while every instinct lurking in Xu's synapses wants to tenderize Almasy's face, she stays and awkwardly pats her friend's back instead.

_She can always pummel Almasy later._

Ironic, she thinks, that they can summon shields out of thin air that are nevertheless tangible enough to stop a bullet, that they can deflect a cast or throw a hold, but they have no defenses against each other, against the kind of damage that flesh and blood and feeling can do.

Xu doesn't say anything, and it's just as well.

Words of comfort would feel as alien on her tongue as another language. Orphans don't know the language of the coddled, and anyway, Quistis's ears aren't trained for sympathy, having never heard it before.

..

.

"RETAKE." says Fujin firmly.

"Instructor Green's a dumbass, ya know. If SeeD were as simple as just followin' orders, they'd all live through their missions."

Seifer is standing in the Quad with his hands jammed in his pockets, staring out into nothing.

His friends hover two tentative paces behind them, glancing worriedly at each other behind his back.

He knows they're trying to help, and he bites his tongue against telling them to leave him the hell alone.

"It doesn't matter, man," says Rajin. "This next time, we'll all make SeeD together, ya know?"

They don't know about Quistis- during the past few weeks, he'd wanted to keep her all to himself. And now, well, now there's no point in bringing it up at all.

"Yeah. You're right," says Seifer. "It doesn't matter."

Turning around, he walks past them back into Garden.

But that's the thing, isn't it? It matters. She mattered.

(Too much.)

.

...

...

.

Days pass and he sees her in the halls from time to time

(watching for her)

and she's wearing that calm, cool composed mask that he knows is both her legacy and a complete and utter lie.

She walks past him without a word- doesn't even look in his direction, and he hates that she can look so calm when his own insides are turning themselves inside out.

Their paths have diverged now; he sits through classes and she is on missions almost constantly.

Word is around Garden, (probably emanating from that stupid new fan club of hers), that she's now top in Junctioning, and has Shiva as her near-constant companion on missions.

She is a model soldier, a model SeeD.

Cadets cluster to her. Instructors hold her up as a model example.

15 confirmed kills.

All he can think about is the girl who played hooky with him one night to ride a Ferris wheel.

.

He keeps to himself, and so does she.

He screws Galanna Valentine up against the wall of the Secret Area, and pretends it's her. But it isn't her, isn't her voice, isn't her golden hair in his fist, and when he comes, it's dull and empty, tainted with the lie.

She avoids the Secret Area, pretends it doesn't exist.

They both tell themselves that it's better this way.

Neither believes it.

..

...

.

She is an Instructor now. His instructor. He can practically taste the irony on his tongue as he grinds his teeth in the back row. 36 confirmed kills, and counting. Evidently she's killed enough living things now to teach others to do the same.

She gazes across the classroom with eyes as cool and distant as ice, and he is not sure if the frigidity of her gaze is due to the fact that she has forgotten him, or because she remembers.

He can't decide which would be worse.

Then she turns her gaze to Squall Leonhart, and he knows he has found a new, fresh hell worse than either previous option.

.

..

Gravel crunches under his boots as Squall's last hit forces him back- the clang of swords is sharp in the air.

A storm is coming- it raises the hair on his arms and the ozone tastes almost metallic on his tongue.

_Let it come._

Squall's gunmetal gray eyes are on him, his gaze even, always even, betraying nothing and Seifer hates him more than ever in this moment. He hates his indifference, his calm stoicism, how Squall can shut away the world when every nerve inside him feels on fire on the time, feels like he's being torn apart piece by piece, second by second by the disparity between what he has always dreamed and what has always been instead-

Grinning, he crooks his finger at the boy and front of him.

_Come and get me._

He does.

Fighting is the only time he feels alive these days, feels vindicated and filled with purpose. The Instructors note that he is driven, ambitious (often to his detriment) but the truth is that all he wants a direction for all his anger, he wants somewhere for it to go that doesn't lead directly back to him, that doesn't cycle itself day after day in his head like some festering sore.

And so he buries it in the boy in front of him.

The way Quistis watches him in class is only one of the reasons he opens up Squall's skull.

The look of fury that finally lights in his opponent's eyes is more than worth the sister scar he gets in return.

She does not visit him in the infirmary, and he hates that he wants her to.

...

...

...

He has a girlfriend.

She is beautiful and rich and has a chip on her shoulder that's almost as big as his. She is fun and careless and utterly naive about the world of mercenaries. She thinks war is a way to get back at Daddy for not tucking her in at night.

She has no fucking idea how big the world really is.

She giggles when he compliments her and wears short skirts that billow around her thighs as she twirls. She hates her father and misses her mother. She still thinks the worst thing that can happen to you in your life is to die; he knows differently.

The worst thing in life is to live when nobody wants you.

She understands nothing about his sordid little life- she likes the way his cadet uniform fits him and she likes that playing around with a Balamb Garden soldier pisses daddy off.

He likes that she doesn't know anything about the critical zones of the body, likes that she doesn't have a clue about the fifty ways you can kill a Grat.

She is not a blunted war orphan whose instincts have been sharpened to serve a sentinel purpose. She does not tell knock-knock jokes or worry too much about everything or even attempt to make him behave himself.

She is nothing like Quistis Trepe, and as she lies beside him in the grass, her pulse fluttering in her pretty neck and her hair fanned out beneath her like a raven's wing, he hates himself for wishing differently.

...

.

..

.

Adrenaline pounds in his veins, and the latest blow from Leonhart yields a trickle of blood down his side.

He looks at them all in turn, searches them for understanding.

He finds none within himself.

He looks into her eyes, those same sea-blue circles that once gazed up at him from the grounds of the Training Center with hope and once, with something more.

"Am I still your favorite student, Instructor?"

She is a lioness as she stares him down, golden and singular in her wrath. "Not anymore."

He knows then that he has lost everything.

It is the beginning of the end.


	2. Chapter 2

**Wolves at the Gate**

_Author's Note: All characters belong to Squaresoft. Work is partially inspired by Silence of the Lambs (Thomas Harris), and there's one line from Legends of the Fall, too. I must also warn you that I'm my own beta reader right now, so, though I try, I do miss some mistakes- I hope you'll enjoy this story in spite of any errors that might be present despite my best efforts. This title is from vaarna from the fic exchange on S/Q livejournal community, and the plot is the brainchild of sissyhiyah, so the credit goes to them._

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A/N: For sissyhiyah._ Because._

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The D-district prisons are as terrible as she remembers them.

The hallway is dark and dank and seems to stretch on forever with only the echo of her heels on polished granite for company. It is the same suffocating silence, same three slate screws drilled into the hard earth, the inner cores filled with eerie blue light. The lifts grind like old bones clanking together.

The hallways prove no more welcoming- they are dim corridors that amplify every sigh, every whisper…every scream.

The prison is not as full as it used to be- the new Galbadian President, Kadar Ranmor, is not quite the fascist that his predecessor was. However, this may be due to the new reputation the prison has gotten over Ranmor's relatively medieval methods. No prisoners drifting through the halls aimlessly now. Nobody looking for a game of Triple Triad. The halls are empty.

Whispers and the occasional wolf whistle follow Quistis as she passes the general population cells. She ignores them.

Previously, the inmates had been scattered around the prison, bored, restless, and more than happy to strike up a game of Triple Triad with a passing soldier. Apparently, under Ranmor's rule, prisoners stay in their cells. No Moombas in this new prison, either, no flashes of orange fur around every corridor. This new prison is decidedly quieter and duller than before.

Check-points have been installed since the last time they were here: as she reaches the designated holding spire, a clerk glances up. He is a young man, though older than she was when she first pulled on the SeeD uniform. It occurs to her that most other soldiers look young to her now, but then, they aren't carrying the wear of a sorceress war in the shadows beneath their eyes, storing the memory of Time Compression in their heads.

Soldiers are not meant to do the things she has done.

(Neither are children).

Once, she was both…though not for long.

The new security checkpoints are rudimentary at best. An armed guard at each of the spire entrances will hardly stop a trained mercenary, although she supposes 'improved security measures' sound good on paper, and political papers are what make places like this turn...what make places like this exist in the first place.

"Name?" asks the clerk.

As if he doesn't know. There are pictures of her fresh, teenaged face plastered up from here to Trabia. The Liberi Fatali. Fate's children. Pretty, fresh-faced killers. The media positively ate it up for awhile, particularly where Rinoa and Squall were concerned. "_A Sorceress and her Beloved Knight!_" plastered on the face of society magazines.

How quickly they forget the kind of damage a sorceress and her knight can do.

"Quistis Trepe, on behalf of Balamb Garden and the Estharian Government. I have clearance to access Solitary Cell Level 287C."

She holds up a laminated badge stating her name, id number and rank, which the clerk takes and copies before handing it back to her, along with a shiny new visitor's badge. Quistis clips it to the front of her uniform without looking at it.

The clerk picks up the phone and says simply, "She's here," before getting up and opening entering a code into a lock box. Retrieving a key, he then opens yet another box, shuffling through the cards.

_Keys and locks. _

Keys can be picked off corpses. Locks can be melted or blasted into pieces. The D-District prison is a joke. Absently, Quistis wonders when she lost her faith in man-made structures.

Probably along the time she lost her faith in men.

"You will have to surrender any weapons at this time."

Coiling up her whip, she lays Save the Queen on the counter in front of the guard. She's already been through the metal detector and left her earrings in a plastic dish- the man running it said they would confiscate her whip here. She does not like the absence of the whip's hard pressure against her hip- it is like missing a limb.

But the guard is not finished. "Are you junctioned, Miss Trepe? Visitors of the D-District Prison are prohibited from carrying magics."

Quistis resists the urge to raise an eyebrow. That's a new policy.

"I am," she says. These days, she is always junctioned- she barely notices the static in her veins any more.

"With your permission," says the guard, with the air of a thoroughly-practiced speech, "I'll now Draw your equipped magics to hold until such time as you are ready to leave the premises." The guard reaches out and clasps her shoulder in a sterile, light gesture- with a jolt, Quistis can feel the magic leaving her. The guard, though practiced in the art of drawing spells, is not a very accomplished magic user- she feels the backlash of the higher spells slam like a hammer into her arm as his own hand jerks with the force of accepting them.

He withdraws his hand. "3 Firas, 4 Blizzagas, 1 Ultima, 3 Sleep extracted," he says, scribbling it down on a pad and handing her a carbon copy. "I will hold these for you until you return."

Quistis keeps her expression neutral as the guard hands her the slip. Apparently, the clerk can't sense Guardian Forces, and for some reason, she doesn't see fit to educate him.

As if in response to her thought, Siren shifts in her mind, her laughter like the gentle music of wind chimes clinking in the breeze.

_A shame_, giggles the GF, her voice as light and melodic as the name suggests, _I should have liked to play with him. You're such a killjoy sometimes, mistress._

Quistis forces the GF back from her thoughts. She does not need distractions, not now. Though she has always had a high compatibility with the GF, Siren is a little too blasé for her liking. She could have junctioned Shiva; however, Shiva is not always on her best behavior when dealing with missions like these, and she does not need any additional distractions.

The guard shuffles around for a moment before handing her a laminated key card. "This key will retrieve the appropriate cell for your visit." He clears his throat. "The cell access system is a bit different now. Swipe this card through the lift, and the cell will automatically be brought back to your level. The card must be returned at the end of your visit. You are not to touch the prisoner for any reason, or release the prisoner from the enclosure at any time. You are not to hand the prisoner any items. You will leave the cell with any and all items retained on your person upon entering it. Your signature at the bottom of this paper is a release of Galbadia's liability concerning any injury that may occur within the span of your visit here, and your understanding and future compliance with the rules as I have stated them to you."

Quistis bends down and loops her signatures along the line at the end of the page.

"You can leave your bag here, if you'd like, Miss Trepe."

"That's all right. I'll keep it with me, thank you." The plain black satchel has already been through the x-ray scanner, and she'll need its contents shortly.

The guard is surreptitiously stealing looks at her and trying to be subtle about it. He is not doing a very good job. After the Trepies and the publicity after the war, Quistis is very used to stares- they seldom draw her interest, now.

She is getting ready to ask him if that will be all when suddenly, the clerk looks past her and then jumps to his feet with a smart salute. "President Ranmor, sir."

Quistis is only mildly surprised by the man's presence- she had been told previously by Laguna that she might expect to see him. Ranmor has only been in office six months, and has, according to Laguna, taken every inch of his administration in hand. He has completely replaced his office staff, and has fired several high-ranking military officials, impervious to or uncaring about the stir it created. Ranmor's election is a response to the Sorceress War, or the limited number of events that everyone understood as being the Sorceress War. People want a man that can defend them, that knows and has practiced the art of battle. Unfortunately, this does not always translate to a compassionate ruler.

After all, Deling's prison still stands…with many of the same prisoners.

Ranmor is not your average politician- he is a veteran from the first sorceress conflict and served in the army with General Caraway some years ago. Rinoa's father had commented that Kadar Ranmor had been a hard man, serious about his job, which coming from a career soldier like Caraway is saying something.

Ranmor is drawing closer. The president is a tall, towering man, still fit despite graying temples, with a slight limp in his left leg. He is flanked by two Galbadian soldier escorts, whom he immediately dismisses at the desk.

"But sir-" starts one, glancing at Quistis.

"Not to worry, Briss. I am sure I have ample security in one of the Liberi Fatali, don't you think?" replies the President, smiling.

Both of the soldiers keep their silence, and do not smile.

"Miss Trepe," President Ranmor says, walking forward and shaking her hand. "We have been expecting you."

The smile does not quite reach his eyes, but then, neither does hers. To say that relations between Balamb and Galbadia have been strained since the war would be an understatement, to say nothing of the tension wrought around the issue

Quistis has been summoned here for.

"I was told I might expect you as well, Mr. President," replies Quistis. "An honor, but an unnecessary one. We might have spoken over the phone, and saved you the time. It was not my intention to remove you from your office."

"I prefer to see to things personally," replies the President.

Quistis tilts her head in acknowledgement. "Commendable, sir, though I'm not sure the honor of your presence was necessary today. Laguna has instructed me that you are to be copied on all data."

The older man lifts an eyebrow. "Is that a tactful way of saying you would prefer to be without my company?"

They are on the walk way now, with Ranmor a few paces behind. Being a soldier, Quistis does not like strangers at her back...especially not politicians. This goes double for politicians who used to be soldiers.

She offers him a bland smile. "It is my way of saying, President Ranmor, that I find your presence here today a puzzlement. Surely Headmaster Cid informed you that you could expect a copy of all depositions, which would be sent directly to your office?"

"I think we agree that the prisoner in question is not just any prisoner," replies the President shortly.

She has no response for that.

Despite the walkway being wide enough for two, the Galbadian President continues to walk a step behind her. "You volunteered for this mission, then?"

"It would be more accurate to say that I was volunteered," she replies.

"And why do you suppose that is?"

_So many questions. _

_Is the man curious, or suspicious? _

**_Both_**_._

"Given our history, I suppose they thought I would have a better rapport with the prisoner."

"Were they correct?"

She shrugs. "It remains to be seen."

The man's gaze is shrewd and watchful- uncommon in politicians, but symptomatic in soldiers. Ranmar may be grey in the temples but he still has the battlefield in his blood.

The knowledge does not endear him to her. In fact, she finds it decidedly inconvenient that he can read her at all.

A pause, and more of that cool, calculating gaze- she can feel it between her shoulder blades like an itch she can't scratch.

Amusement in the President's voice, now. "You don't like me, do you, Miss Trepe?"

"As we are here on professional matters, any avarice or affection I have for your person is quite irrelevant, Mr. President," she replies, her eyes on the catwalk. Her voice does not catch, not once.

"Seeing as I asked you a question, I believe a response would be appropriate...and relevant." Amusement is fading, now. He is not used to people that do not answer his questions.

Quistis is an excellent liar- she can pass a polygraph in her sleep. However, right now, she is tired, she is irritated, and she does not much feel like lying to reassure any member of the Galbadian Government.

And so she answers honestly: "I'll answer as a civilian then, and not as a soldier. Since you ask; I like you no more or less than I like any other politician, President Ranmor.

However, in light of the fact that your campaign preached the importance of peace and unity in restoring Galbadia to its former glory, I find it ironic that your first act in taking up Deling's slack was to order a tribunal for Edea Kramer and her former knight."

"Ah, yes. I was sorry to hear about Mrs. Kramer," said the President.

"As you were foremost in campaigning for her trial and subsequent execution, President Ranmar, I would have thought that her death would come as a welcome surprise, as it saved you the trouble of dirtying your own hands."

She is two days fresh from her foster mother's funeral, and still raw.

She can still smell the flowers- the heavy perfume of the carnations, the stinging sweetness of the lilies. There is a dull heaviness in her chest that feels like lead as she moves and breathes and carries out the wishes of Cid Kramer, but it shifts and sharpens now into anger at the man in front of her.

"Sorceress Kramer murdered Deling on a televised broadcast, perhaps you remember?"

"_Edea Kramer_ unwillingly became a sorceress at the age of 5, and dedicated her life to the care and concern of orphaned children. _Ultimecia_ murdered Vinzer Deling, who, by happenstance, was a megalomaniac and a fool."

"This is an important distinction to you."

"It's not a distinction. It's the truth."

_No wonder you didn't recognize it_, she adds to herself.

Years ago she would not have said such things. She would have bowed her head and asked for her orders and agreed with anything the President of a nation saw fit to say. But the crucible of time and loss has changed her- it has made her angry, and worse, utterly indifferent, to men like the one in front of her; men with blood on their hands and lies rolling around in their mouths.

True, she is still a mercenary. She can kill on command, and she kneels to the ones that trained her...but she won't curtsy. Not anymore.

"You think that I am the same as Deling?" asks Ranmar, and there is anger creeping into his voice now, real irritation behind that carefully-schooled mouth.

"In terms of compassion and reason I find you no different than Deling," replied Quistis. "For me, it is the same."

"That's very indirect of you," replies the President, and his empty smile is now half a sneer. "Perhaps you might consider a career in politics."

She stops walking, and turns to give him the full force of her attention. It is a sight that makes many uncomfortable. "Thank you, President, but I enjoy the luxury of looking my enemies in the eye."

Before Ranmor can respond to that, she continues. "Since I have answered your question, Mr. President, perhaps you will indulge me by answering one of mine. Why _are_ you here?"

All pretenses of friendliness have now vanished from Ranmor's face and from his voice, leaving only the cold, hard lines of a man who likes power and will fight to maintain it.

This face suits him better.

"I have made no secret that I oppose any meetings between the prisoner and Balamb Garden-"

"Or, indeed, the prisoner and anyone," interrupts Quistis.

Ranmor continues as if she hasn't spoken. "-and I believe your negotiations, as a soldier of Balamb, represent a conflict of interest in this case."

"The prisoner is scheduled to be executed in one month," she says. "I cannot imagine in what possible way you think Garden plans or desires to interfere in your operations here, or what objections you can have to our contact. If you wish to search me for weapons and draw my magic at every visit, you are certainly entitled- after all, this is your prison. However, I must say that as a present delegate for the government of Esthar, any allegations on your part before my mission has even begun could go over rather badly for the already tenuous relations between Esthar and Galbadia."

"Are you threatening me, Miss Trepe?"

"Not at all, President, merely stating the truth." She stops just short of the lift kiosk. "And here is where I fear we leave each other, President. Concerning your most recent relations with the prisoner, I think perhaps I would have better success if he were to avoid seeing me in your company."

President Ranmor recognizes the dismissal- it registers as sparks in his dark, clever eyes.

"What measure of success can you hope to have with a prisoner such as this?" asks the President. "What answers can you hope to obtain?"

"You might ask the offices of Dr. Amatsa Odine, and President Loire. They were the ones that requisitioned a SeeD consult in this case. My understanding is that while biological samples have already been harvested from the prisoner, evaluations of a psychological nature have been less...forthcoming. I have been given no additional directives as to what type of information to obtain...only to obtain what I can in the...remaining time."

Ranmor glances up at the rows of cells lit in the dim blue light, each metal cube holding the quiet leavings of the life he confined to it.

Quistis has to bite down on her tongue to prevent saying anything else. "Thank you for accompanying me, President Ranmar."

Ranmor pauses, and gives her a hard look. "A free piece of advice, Miss Trepe. A poisonous snake can bite even after the head is removed."

She hears the President's footsteps fade away, and she is left with only herself and a sudden, suffocating silence in which the thing she is here to do sinks in.

All her anger seems to drain away with him, and she is left with feelings that are much less easily defined, and much more troublesome.

But there is no avoiding it, and the cold, stale air of the prison does not invite delay.

She inserts the card key, and the lift springs to life.

"D-Distrct Prison Cell Access Terminal. Clearance Accepted, retrieving 287: Solitary Line, Cell C."

Like stacks of blocks, the cells begin to lift with clanking steel and whining hydraulics, causing some surprise and dissension among the prisoners being displaced. As the cell blocks rise, Quistis composes her face into as much of a mask as she can make it.

With surprising speed the cell is directly in front of her, and she finds her stomach is clenched as tightly as a fist. She finds herself widening her stance, the absence of her whip at her hip a hollow ache of air. She braces her feet hard against the soles of her shoes and keeps her eyes determinedly ahead.

The cool metallic voice of the machine drones, on, oblivious to her anxiety:

_"Cell retrieved- D-District Prison Cell 287 C: Prisoner, Seifer Almasy."_


	3. Chapter 3

For a moment, she simply stands there, her hands balled into fists. Her long, measured breaths sound needlessly loud in her ears.

The viewing slot is already open- inside, Quistis can only see shadows left by the grainy blue light that illuminates the rest of the prison.

"Is that my dear Instructor?" A voice pours from the cell, rusty from disuse- it is a sound that seems to come from the darkness of the cell itself, low and rough and gravelly. "Well _hello_, Quistis."

Ice flows through her veins at the sound of his voice. The anger that had roiled in her gut around Ranmor has now settled into something that shrinks back from the cell in front of her, from the thing she must do. She sifts through herself for some measure of courage and finds only resolve. Flat, cold, resolve, which at times she thinks has replaced her blood.

"Seifer." With difficulty, Quistis forces herself forward, forces the name from her throat.

But Ranmor has made updates to the Restricted Cells: a thick photonic screen that covers the single window in the cell. Beyond the pale blue screen, she can see only shadows. The door to the cell is locked, the photonic screen active. She knows this already without testing it.

"How did you know it was me?" she asks, as an afterthought.

"Only you would wear perfume to a prison, Trepe," he said. "Besides, the walls around here have ears."

She can't look into his eyes to measure his tone- to read the amusement or derision there.

He is only a voice.

And as much as it saves her from having to look him in the eye, it saves him, too, from having to meet hers.

"Just a minute, please."

"I'm not going anywhere," he replies.

She walks over to the wall panel and hits the comlink for the security desk.

"This is visitor badge 515-C-Class A requesting containment field lowered for single entry."

"...there isn't anything in here about allowing anyone into the cell," replies the box on the wall stubbornly.

Quistis has to bite down hard on her cheek to prevent a retort. "As I understand it, the D-district cells have a one-way entry allowance that is overridable by any Class B or Class C employee of the prison for the general population."

"Yeah, that's in a GP cell...you're in a restricted section, Miss Trepe. There are security codes required for those."

"My orders are to interview the prisoner, and I can't do so effectively if I can't see him. If I have to come up here, get President Loire on the line, and then come back down here to enter the cell again, I'm going to be inconvenienced. I'll have to report this inconvenience to my superiors. I refuse to interrogate this prisoner in the middle of the hallway."

A pause. "I'll have to clear it with Dedalus."

"Do so."

Dedalus, the warden of the prison that operates under Ranmor's apparently ever-present eyes, is the one that had searched her at the doors...thoroughly. She likes him only slightly more than President Ranmor, which is to say, not at all.

The soldier is back on the phone again. "Request has been granted. One moment. You'll have to hit the prisoner cell comlink to get back out, and a guard will come assist you."

"Fine." She steps through as the field weakens, feeling the rush of air that swirls around her ankles as the door once again slides shut behind her.

A mercenary first, she takes stock of her surroundings. The cell is a six-by-five enclosure, fashioned out of steel and a shell of hard plastic. A toilet is in the far right corner, and a small aluminum sink is placed next to it. Both structures seem firmly affixed to the surrounding wall.

Aside from that, the room is bare wall and tiled floor, and the air is heavy and stale. The small window, from the inside, emits a faint hum. It is the same technology bug zappers use, only cranked up to accommodate sufficient voltage to fry a human being.

After her quick assessment of the room, her eyes flicker over to Seifer, who is seated and whose eyes have not left her. Unlike Ranmor's stare, which was fixed to intimidate, the pressure of Seifer's gaze carries only a mild curiosity and perhaps, underlying that, a strange amusement that she is here.

It has been months since she's seen him. One of last times, his sword had been drawn, and there was a sorceress between them.

The very last time, there was a courtroom between them.

Now there is nothing but the solid, empty space of the cell. No weapons, save the ones they can fashion out of words, and she wonders at the fact that she feels more uneasy now than when he was rushing her with Hyperion, trying to impale her with the blade.

He is much thinner than he was at the trial, and the shadows under his eyes have deepened. There are bruises on his face, too- some a bright purple and some a sickly blood-orange color that is starting to blend with the skin. His hair is long, too, and hangs in his eyes, and the blonde stubble of a beard is thickening on his face. His arms and legs are in heavy chain shackles, bound together, and Quistis has to wonder why they've bothered to chain an already trapped man.

The reasons, she guesses, are psychological.

The cell is dank and dark and reeks of the stale odor of dried sweat and the faint but fetid stench of slow plumbing.

It seems stupid to ask how he is doing, so she doesn't.

Despite the ragged condition of his body his eyes are lit with a deep, unbroken interest as he looks at her. For a moment, she returns it.

His posture is as straight as ever- the arrogant tilt of his head at the same imperious twelve degrees. They haven't broken his spirit yet- though, judging by his appearance, it isn't for lack of trying.

"Brave, of you, coming _in_ the lion's den." he says. "Who you trying to convince you're not afraid…you, or me?"

And there it is again- that same old irritation- he might be her student again, smirking at her from across a classroom, testing her patience and her position.

"Believe it or not, Seifer, I've fought bigger monsters than you," she replies. She is determined not to show fear, which she suspects shows as much as anything else she might employ against him.

Instead of glaring at her, however, he grins. "Touché. So, do what do I owe the pleasure?"

"Didn't the walls tell you already?" she asks him, now stuck in that thick vein of sarcasm that he's always taken such delight in drawing out of her.

The small tug in the corner of his mouth tells her he's picked up on the sarcasm. "Nah. I just thought they'd send you."

She blinks. "And what made you think that?"

"Because you'd come," he replies, simply.

She doesn't know what to make of that statement, so she busies herself with what she came for, with her directives: simple, _straightforward_ directives. "I'm here on behalf of Esthar to record your own testimony on the events of the Second Sorceress War."

His eyes narrow, slightly. "Why?"

"I'm not entirely sure, but I think because Laguna wants a full account of the events of the war, or as many accounts as possible. He wrote an account of the war with Adele, himself, but his knowledge of this war is largely incomplete."

"A historical account?" A pause. "By all means."

Being set down in recorded history probably appeals to him, she thinks, even if the pages will paint him as the villain.

She removes a small recording device from her bag and makes sure the tape is rewound. "I'm going to record the conversations between us, if that's all right with you."

"Doesn't matter to me." He watches her set up the tape recorder. "How long will you be here?"

She pauses, trying to think of the right words. "Until it's finished."

"You mean until _I'm_ finished."

"...yes." There's no point in lying to him. She is not here to save him- the nation of Esthar has no interest in his fate, and Seifer has no friends in Balamb, either. With Edea gone now, Cid has no reason to champion Seifer. Cid, in fact is in no position to help anyone- he has been shut up in his office since the news of Edea.

He leans back in the cell. "Fair enough. You answer my questions, then, and I'll answer yours."

"Answering your questions isn't part of my contract," she replies coolly.

He folds his hands behind his head. He might be vacationing on a beach, instead of a restricted cell in the highest security prison in the world. "Yeah, well, I ain't got a contract, so how about explaining to me how you're gonna get the answers you want out of me without something in return?"

She glares at him for a moment. He has her there. He knows damned well that if he won't talk, there's very little she can do (legally) to make him. And he knows she always plays by the rules- his immunity is her good character. Underneath the layers of bruise and grime and grit, he is still the same irrepressible enigma, still tugging on his leash.

"I can just hear that big brain of yours cooking," he says, chuckling. "Weighing, balancing, trying to decide how exactly this is all going to pan out, deciding what angles to choose. You haven't changed at all, have you?"

"Have you?" She retorts. Damnit, she should have stayed mad. It made her reckless, yes, but it also gave her momentum. She's been back-tracking since she entered the cell.

He answers her with that same infuriating shrug. "Why don't you go back to your little hotel, order some room service, and decide just how much you want whatever information you think I have?"

"I didn't come here to play games with you, Seifer," she says.

"This isn't a game," he replies evenly. "It's a trade. Information for information. You should be good at trading by now."

She glares at him. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"Exactly what I said. Think about it, and maybe we'll talk tomorrow."

It takes her a moment to realize she's been dismissed.

…

….

…

..

.

The Dingo Desert seems to go on forever- sandy and hollow and dry as a bone.

The rental military jeep courtesy of Galbadia smells like stale cigarette smoke, and the heavy odor of the cheap green air freshener intended to improve it is almost worse. She drives with the windows down, ignoring the sand and wishing she'd had the foresight to request something with a collapsible top, even if it means she'll wind up with her own personal beach inside the car.

As she drives, she thinks, letting her thoughts flow like the warm wind through the open window.

The truth of it is that she had not been prepared for him. In fairness, she knows that there is never any way to prepare for someone like Seifer, someone without rules or boundaries of their own, but she had hoped that her natural defenses against him had grown stronger over the years.

_Wrong_.

She had prepared for a broken man. She had gotten instead a man that was still more interested in breaking her.

The kind of discomfort she feels now is the result of that lack of foresight and the shock of seeing him as a haggard lump of bruised bones. She is just beginning to feel it now. It has followed her from the prison, and is only now climbing onto her shoulders, sinking its guilt and self-reproach into her thoughts.

The memory of her first battle with a ruby dragon comes to mind along this seam of contemplation. The battle itself was a blur, all motion and adrenaline, and she hadn't realized she'd been badly burned until after the beast's body lay cooling at her feet. The pain had come later, crawling in a searing red blister up her arm that throbbed with an intensity that made her teeth hum.

_Just like now._

She tightens her hands around the steering wheel. She reminds herself that this is just another job. It is a job that will be catalogued and filed and stored away in a filing cabinet that will most likely never see the light of day again.

She checks into the hotel and orders a full meal, prawns and sea scallops on a bed of angel hair pasta with a white wine reduction and a glass of chilled pinot grigio. She rolls the wine around in her mouth before swallowing it.

A trade.

_You answer my questions, and I'll answer yours._

_Trade_. The word tastes bitter on her tongue- it spreads through her mouth and contaminates the wine. Quistis Trepe does not trade. She does not bargain. She did not spend her childhood bloody and bruised, proving herself to every military misogynist and exceeding every expectation they set in front of her to travel the world on her knees, her hands cupped in supplication.

But Seifer has never been impressed by her strength. He has always been more interested in testing her weaknesses.

She has two unsavory choices, then: she can fail the mission, or she can give Seifer what he wants. Deep down, she knows already this is not a mission she can fail.

In two weeks he will be dead, and everything she's said will be dead with him, sealed away in a pine box and buried without a marker. She can edit the tape. Her secrets will die with him.

She'll play his game, then, because soon, it won't matter.

She cleans her plate and drains the glass, transcribing her notes and compiling a fax to send to Balamb and Esthar in the morning.

The sheets are 800 Count Centrian Cotton, and the pillows are stuffed with phoenix down. Despite that, or perhaps because of it, she is restless in her sleep. There are no soft things in her world- not beds or pillow or words, and this entire room feels strange instead of soothing.

She can hear herself blink in the dark.

_"You should be good at trading by now."_

**14 more days.**


	4. Chapter 4

The prison is not a pleasant place for the senses. In his mouth, he can taste the bittersweet copper tang of blood, feel the sting of his split lip and the bite of the shackles in the knobby bones of his wrist. He can hear whispering from the next cell over, low, and faint, followed by laughter.

The smells are old and acrid- there is no pleasant sensation he can pull from this place. He could retreat to memories, but resists- he doesn't want them contaminated by this place. He's saving them for the end.

One pleasant thing hovers in the cell- the faint scent of peonies, white and sweet and clean, remnants of Trepe's perfume, and this he'll use while he can, because in a few hours, it will be gone anyway.

She is as beautiful and cold an idol as he remembers, beautiful face and coral pink lips and eyes the color of glacier ice. There is heat there too if you know where to look for it, warm flesh and lips and soft curves lurking just beneath the frost- a flash of that same old fire had come to her eyes when he suggested an exchange. She's not broken, not yet, not completely. It's good to know.

She is not happy to be here, but for some reason, she is determined to be. She is not afraid of him physically, but she has always been wary of where their conversations lead her. She looks a little wearier since last they met; battle worn inside and out now, judging from the slightly dead look in her eyes. Those eyes, once bright blue pools lit with ambition, are now blue stones polished dull and smooth by a never-ending river of blood and sacrifice and little sleep. She is tired in her brain and in her blood, and tired animals can be led where they would not otherwise go. Whether or not he can use this new lassitude of hers to his advantage remains to be seen, however. Perhaps she is disillusioned from being a soldier- tired of standing in lines and killing by numbers. It would be refreshing. Better than that, it would be useful.

He has other memories of a Quistis that is neither scarred nor weary, but he does not draw them out in this place.

Boots click down the hallway. Three of them, this time, and judging by the crispness of the steps, the slight hobble in the left shoe, Ranmor is with them this time. Back to collect more information. Useless. He will not tell them anything. Pride is a cheap thing, tarnished and worth far less than he had once thought, but it is one of the few things that remain to him in here, and he swears they will kick his head in before he'll hand it over.

He gets to his feet as the cell open, and schools his face into an almost bored expression.

"Well, gentlemen, are we back for more?"

He breaths in deeply, and holds the scent there for a moment; sweet, clean, and bright and part of a different life, before the first blow sends him spinning.

…..

…..

"Hello, this is President Loire's office."

A low, deep voice on the other end of the line. Kiros, probably. Ward...well, for obvious reasons, Ward doesn't answer the phone.

"May I speak to President Loire, please? This is Quistis Trepe, reporting from the D-District Prison assignment."

"Yes, of course, Miss Trepe," says Kiros. "He'll be pleased to hear from you. One moment, please."

"Hi, Quistis, this is Laguna," says the new voice. As ever, she is slightly surprised by his nonchalance. It is a character trait that puts them all slightly off-kilter, with the exception of Selphie.

"President Loire-"

"I've told you, Quistis, call me Laguna."

"Laguna," Quistis winces to say it. "I just wanted to call and update you with the status of the mission."

"Ah, yes, how is it going?"

"As well as can be expected," replies Quistis. "Are there any additional questions you'd like asked?"

"Uh, well…." The President trails off, leaving an awkward silence in his wake.

"There's nothing additional you want asked? I've established a basic timeline through some questions of my own, and there are a few new details to add, but…there's nothing further you'd like asked?"

"To be honest, Quistis, this assignment wasn't really my idea."

Another beat of silence ensues.

"…I'm sorry?"

"I….well, that is to say, it was…someone else's."

"Odine's?"

"No, he just offered to partially finance it in exchange for a copy of all information retrieved."

She pauses a moment.

_If the idea isn't Laguna's, and it isn't Odine's…._

"Presid-"

"Laguna."

"Laguna," she finishes, bordering on exasperated, "May I ask exactly whose idea the assignment _was_?"

"Well, to be honest, it was Ellone's."

Of all the names he could have said, she would have guessed that one dead last. "_Ellone_?"

"Yes. She thought it might be good for…well, good for you two to talk."

Quistis knows that the silence that follows is rude, but she can't think of anything else to say.

"But, erm, feel free to call in with updates, if you want. I'll make sure she gets them."

"I….may I speak to Ellone, please?"

"Well, you could, but she's visiting Raine right now. Well not Raine, exactly, just her grave, but, you know. I don't think there's a phone where she's staying, but I've got a soldier accompanying her, Coss Whately, and if you wanted to get ahold of him, then-"

"That's not necessary. But please have her give me a call when she gets back, would you?"

"Sure, no problem….was there anything else you needed, Quistis?"

"No, P….Laguna. Thank you."

Quistis replaces the receiver, frowning. Ellone's idea? Squall had mentioned that Ellone had visited him after the trial, but she hardly thinks Seifer would have requested to speak to _her_ specifically. Then again, she remembers her conversation

in the cell:

_"I just thought they'd send you."_

_"And what made you think that?"_

_"Because you'd come."_

She knows, deep down, that Seifer would never have requested to speak with her. This was Ellone's idea…but why?

_"She thought it might be good for you two to talk."_

Quistis does not sleep much after that, but when she does, it's of a dark-eyed girl in a sky-blue dress, beckoning her towards a wishing well, telling her to come just a little closer to peer down a hole Quistis knows has no end.

…..

….

…

..

.

"Good morning, Instructor," says Seifer, as she walks calmly into the cell. She has her chainmail on in force today- she's wearing a neatly pressed SeeD uniform, and her hair is stuffed into a tight chignon that twists at the back of her skull. He fights a smile- the woman has gaps a mile wide in that pretty head of hers, and she busies herself with uniforms and grandmother hairstyles because she thinks it actually covers her up, that it shields her a little from the world.

_Useless- he already knows what she looks like with her hair down._

"So," he asks her, "What have you decided?"

"Since you insist on being childish," she begins, because she has no intention of going softly into this dark night of his, "I've decided to indulge you."

"Excellent," he says, undeterred by her less-than-subtle barbs. And why should he be? He's getting his way. "So, why don't you begin by telling me how the old gang is doing?"

She tells him, leaving nothing out about Rinoa and Squall becoming an item, about Zell becoming a combat Instructor, about Selphie becoming Admissions Director and about Irvine buying a ring. She tells him about Ellone, living in Esthar, and about Garden, and its recent entanglements in Trabia. They seem like a world away here, to him and to her.

Seifer listens quietly the whole time. "Pubes and the Princess, Messenger Girl and the Cowboy, Zell the Wonder Boy and that Library chick….leaves you the odd man out, doesn't it?"

She lifts her chin- this is one of the many turns in their conversations that she should have seen coming. "I don't see it that way." There are new marks on his face today, and he's favoring his left side.

"Of course you don't." He laughs. "You'd be alone at your own birthday party, wouldn't you?"

She wonders how she can feel sorry for him and want to blacken his eye at the same time.

She crosses her legs. "This conversation has taken an inappropriate turn."

He waves his hand. "Then by all means, steer it back, _Instructor_."

She refuses to be rattled at her old address. She sits up straight, re-crosses her legs tightly at the ankle, and asks, "Were Sorceress Adele's intentions towards Rinoa spontaneous, or premeditated?"

"Spontaneous, I guess. The woman was even more fractured than Ultimecia."

"And yet you served her." The words are out before she can stop them.

"You know what they say. In for a Death Claw, in for a Dragon."

"No one says that."

He shrugs. "Maybe it'll catch on. So, how come you wound up the odd man out, anyway?"

"I'm not answering that."

"As I recall, those were the terms of our agreement. A question for a question. Or do you not know the answer?"

Pressed SeeD uniform and tight chignon aside, right now, Quistis has all the grace of a cornered alley cat, and it all has to do with one little word she's never been able to swallow: _failure_. "What do you gain by this? In a few weeks-"

"What, I'll be dead?" he sneers. "Well, the fat lady ain't singing yet, is she? Maybe you need another night to think about it."

And just like that, he turns to stone, and there is nothing she can sway to animate him.

Quistis makes it all the way to the rental car before she explodes, kicking the rental car door and nearly breaking all her toes in the process.

Alone in her hotel room that night, she orders a bottle of Dolletian Pinot Noir and drinks half of it in a snit, grinding her teeth between gulps.

**Thirteen days to go.**

….and he's already under her skin.


	5. Chapter 5

"Do you remember the day Zell lost his pants and got locked out of the house?"

The third day, and she is resigned to more journeys into their mutual past. This one, however, spawns a rather funny memory. "Are you referring to the day that you _stole_ Zell's swimming trunks and _locked_ him out of the cottage?"

"Hmmm...now that doesn't sound like something I'd do."

Quistis rolls her eyes. They are sitting opposite each other, their backs pressed against the walls. "Along this trip down memory lane, I also remember the time that you and Squall took a stick and played piñata with each other's skulls. You lost what, two baby teeth, and Squall lost one?

"No. Squall lost two. I only lost one."

Nearly fifteen years and a war have passed and there is still that stupid spark of childish competition between them.

"Yes, well, it was like looking at a jack o' lantern for weeks. I never understood you two…why you picked on him so much."

"Dunno," says Seifer seriously. "When we were kids, after Ellone left, it was like he didn't feel anything, he didn't react to anything…like he was too _good_ to feel anything. It drove me nuts."

"Meanwhile, _you_ reacted to everything," observes Quistis.

"Guess I was trying to level the playing field."

S_quall, sitting on the sand dune, cold and remote, as if nothing could touch him, as if he were too good for the pain and misery that surrounded him, and Seifer wanted him to react, to hurt like the rest of them hurt, like **he** hurt-_

He derails his own line of thought. "Y' know, you and me, we're alike in a lot of ways."

"How do you figure?" She's suspicious now. She used to get that look in her eyes as a kid, too, and later as a jc, usually only around him during a conversation. It used to be a light sort of suspicion, born of the mutual mischief between them, but now, there's actual caution there- a fear of getting hurt.

He misses the old look.

"Well, you joined up with the Garden expecting fame and glory, so did I."

She almost laughs. "That's _not_ why I joined Garden."

"Then why did you?"

"Because..." She starts in a lie, and then stops. Seifer is going to be dead in less than three weeks...does it really matter?

"Because I didn't have anywhere else to go." she says.

She can swear his eyes see through her. "You're telling me the truth now, aren't you?"

"Yes."

"Because I'm going to die, right?"

"That's…part of it," she replies.

"Refreshing, isn't it?"

_Like ripping off a band aid_, she thinks. _Liberating and painful all at once. _

"…it has its merits."

He leans back, satisfied. "So, tell me a secret about you. One secret. A secret you've never told anyone else. And don't lie, you're shit at lying."

"Fifteen different lie detector tests beg to differ."

"Machines don't know your tells," he replies easily. "If you tell me the truth, I'll answer all of your questions for the rest of the day. How's that for a deal?"

Her eyes are on the wall. Give him something small, something insignificant. She has to choose carefully. She rifles through her memory and tries to select something minute, something with the fewest hard edges. She knows as well as anything how well he can wield her own thoughts against her.

"Come on," needles Seifer, getting bored. "Even you must have some sort of a criminal past. A mild arson, a petty burglary-"

"When I lived with my foster family, when I was about 9, I stole something," she says, deciding on one.

He raises an eyebrow. "Oh? What was it?"

"Oh, it was just a page out of a magazine. I doubt they ever missed it. My foster mother, she had all of these magazines scattered over the coffee table. Ladies Home Journal, Glorious Gardens, Home Decor, Bluebook, you know, house and

design and society things. She never actually read any of them- they were just there for display…like a bowl of plastic fruit. They had those, too- big shiny bananas and hard plastic apples. I never understood it."

He wonders if she realizes how much of herself she leaves open, even with the little things. But that's the thing about Quistis. _Everything_ matters.

"Anyway, I was reading through a magazine one day, and I saw this picture of a family sitting down to dinner. It was some sort of holiday, because everyone was dressed up. There was a big bird on the table with all the trimmings, and everybody was smiling, sitting close to each other, kind of leaning in towards the turkey. It was nothing special, just a big, happy family at a dinner table. I think it was actually an ad for flatware. I remember tearing out the ad and putting it in my pocket. I used to take it out and look at it when I was alone. I think still have it."

She _knows_ she still has it. It's tucked away in Combat Techniques- Critical Zones, page 58, though she hasn't looked at it for years. At some point, it either became too painful or too pointless, she isn't sure which. "I don't know why, but I just couldn't ever seem to throw it away."

She knows she's left herself open just a little, but what can he make fun of? He lost his family, too. He must have wanted one happy dinner, must have wanted someone to hand him a plate and a dollop of mashed potatoes and look at him as if he belonged there, even if it was only for one day.

Instead of ridiculing her, however, he seems thoughtful. "Your foster family...how come you didn't stay with them, anyway? Marry a politician, become a socialite, eat dinners with fifty different forks? You would've been good at it."

Yes, she thinks, she **would** have been good at it. Politics is all about shutting human parts of yourself off for long periods of time, closing doors and forgetting the rooms inside them exist. She had plenty of practice, even at the age of six.

She shrugs. "My foster father was an influential senator in the Dolletian senate, my foster mother was a socialite, and I was supposed to be another plastic bowl of fruit to complete their happy house. They wanted a little girl- a real one,

though, not a blunted war orphan. They were happy to let me go, in the end."

"Their loss," he said, and before the compliment can really sink in, he continues, "Why do you think you kept it, all this time?"

"It was a picture of a happy family. It was _normal_. I don't think I ever had anything normal in my life, and even though I knew I'd never have a family, a real one, never sit in a kitchen in a normal house and eat a Fall Solstice dinner, I still wanted it."

"That's only because you didn't have it," pointed out Seifer. "If you'd had it, you would have been as bored with it as everybody else."

"Maybe so, but I don't think anyone ever sat and picked shrapnel out of their leg for an hour and thought 'I can't wait to get out there and do it again'. Being a SeeD only looks good on paper. Most people actually look forward to holidays."

"You never know. Maybe all that happy family shit only looks good on paper, too."

Quistis shrugs. "It's not as if you or I will ever know, will we?"

"Probably not," agrees Seifer.

"Fair's fair," says Quistis, folding her arms. "Now tell me a secret about you. One nobody knows." At his frown, she glares at him. He'd agreed to answer questions about the war, not himself, and now he's backed into a corner- a corner he created. Seifer does not like to be caught in his own traps.

"It was your idea," she reminds him.

Seifer was always a stickler for rules- not ones _others_ made, no, but his own he followed religiously - it was part of his honor code.

They have that in common, that stupid sense of honor, and though they have always wielded it differently, it has always been each to their own detriment.

"Well?" she prods.

"I'm thinking, I'm thinking. I don't have a whole lotta secrets." he settles back against the seat. "Oh, okay, here's one. When we were kids, I had a crush on you."

Her frown deepens. She leans back, increasing the distance between them. "You did not."

She knows he doesn't lie, but she also knows that he shares the truth when it suits him.

"No, I did. It was that hair of yours. It reminded me of that story, you know, the one where the chick gets locked up in a tower and throws down her hair so she can get laid?"

"…Rapunuzel?"

"That's the one. 'Course, you kinda ruined it when you bossed me around- you were annoying as hell sometimes. Pretty, though."

"Seifer, you used to put lizards under my pillow."

"So? That's what boys do when they like a girl, isn't it?"

"You buried me up to my waist in sand once and left me for the tide."

"You got out, didn't you?"

She rolls her eyes. "By that logic, you must've been head over heels in love with Squall."

"Please. It'd be like fucking a brick wall."

Quistis has to fight a smile at the image that presents, among other things.

"Besides, if I played for the other team, I'd have MUCH better taste in men."

"What, like Zell?"

"Chickenwuss? Don't make me laugh." He pauses to consider. "Although, maybe in a dress, with a little mascara...pigtails…" He pretends to picture it. "Nah. Not even then. Zell'd make one ugly fucking girl."

Quistis chuckles despite herself but she catches it quickly, and then launches into her list of questions.

He's as good as his word. He answers every one.

Much later, Quistis walks out to her car. The sun is beginning to sink behind the spires, low and bloody and red. The desert is cold at night, and she wraps her arms around herself, waiting for the heater to kick in.

She turns his words around in her head, trying to figure them out.

He's playing with her, she decides. The only thing Seifer Almasy has ever really loved is his reflection.

She turns up the radio to break the never-ending howl of the wind.

**Twelve more days.**


	6. Chapter 6

The room is a spacious suite, with a room for sitting and a Jacuzzi big enough for two. It has a mini-fridge filled to the teeth with tiny plastic bottles of liquor, and a bowl of fresh fruit is set out every morning. The television has 116 channels, and downstairs, there is a pool.

Quistis has eyes for none of it.

She has stayed in far worse hotels, rooms that came with a complimentary fly swatter for killing roaches and beds with stains still wet on the sheets, but Quistis _hates_ **this** hotel room- she hates it down to the little lily-scented soaps and the towels folded like swans on the sink counters.

She has an unofficial 'escort' now, courtesy of Ranmor- she's seen the same car tailing her twice, the same inept soldier tracking her from stop to stop within the city. She wonders if perhaps she shouldn't have played nice, but she thinks

Ranmor probably would have had her followed regardless of their newfound animosity. Besides, the tail is amusing more than anything.

She sits on the hotel bed, staring at the wall. She watches the plastic cards in the alarm clock flip forward. 5:05pm. 5:07pm. 5:15pm.

She wonders if time goes faster for Seifer.

When Quistis can't stand the silence (or her thoughts) any longer, she picks up the phone.

"...this is Irvine," says the voice on the other end, sounding groggy. Quistis kicks herself. It's early morning there, and apparently, a world away, some people are actually sleeping.

"Irvine…it's Quistis." She's not exactly certain why she's called Irvine, except Selphie will make a bigger deal out of it than it is, Zell will flip out because it's Seifer, and Squall…well, she hasn't bothered with Squall since he suggested she talk to the infrastructure. And Rinoa…well, Rinoa is out of the question. Irvine, though- Irvine is flawed- he makes mistakes and admits them freely. Irvine is as close to humanity as any of them get, most days.

"I'm sorry to call so early."

Irvine must catch some undercurrent in her tone, because his next statement is more alert. "What's goin' on? What's wrong?"

"I don't know," she says, feeling silly now. "This...it's just turning out harder than I thought."

This is the liquor talking, because Quistis Trepe does not have difficulties on missions. Quistis Trepe is made of solid steel. Quistis Trepe is the standard by which all SeeD standards are set.

Quistis Trepe also speaks in the third person when she's upset, apparently.

"Do you want me to come down there, darlin'?" asks Irvine, and though Quistis is grateful for the offer, she knows Irvine can't come, for both their sakes.

"No…I just….I don't know. I suppose I wanted to hear a friendly voice."

A pause. "Quisty, are you all right? Because if this is too much…Squall was even worried that we shouldn't've sent you…"

"No. It's just….I thought….it would be different."

"How'd you think it would be different?"

She hesitates.

"…I thought I'd be able to hate him."

…..

….

…

..

.

"And so the court verdict was death."

They've spent the last hour discussing his trail, and have arrived at the crucial summation- the reason they're both here.

"Yeah, something about depraved indifference," he says, looking the part.

"Do you think you deserve to die?" She asks this to be a little mean, and because she genuinely wants to know.

He shrugged. "_Deserve's_ a pretty subjective word."

"Well, I'm asking the subject."

"Dunno. Do you think I should?" She might have just asked him about the weather, for all his nonchalance.

She just stares at him.

"Turnaround's not fair play, or what?" he says, irritated by her silence. "You're a soldier. You deal out death sentences all the time. How hard can it be to answer?"

"I'm not going to validate your death," she says, angry now.

"So I should validate my own?" he returns, a little of that same anger in his voice. "I should say, yeah, and that'll make it all okay for you? Ranmor asked me the same thing, you know. Asked if I was sorry."

She does not like the direct comparison to Ranmor. "And what did you tell him?"

"I told him 'sorry' didn't exist in my world," he said. "It doesn't exist in yours, either, you know."

"I don't follow."

"Did you ever personally apologize to everyone and everything you ever killed? Write the families?"

"The people I killed were enemies of-"

"Yeah, someone pointed on a map and told you where your enemies were. It didn't make you right."

Quistis sits back, the cell wall as hard and unforgiving as her thoughts. "Why are you so determined to bring me to your level? You want to bring me down as low as you, and then what? You'll have won?"

He laughs. "There's no 'levels' here. There's you and me, Quistis, and at the end of the day, we're the same. I'm as good as you are, you're as awful as I am, just depends on who you ask, doesn't it? History is the just spoils of victory in war.

Had Ultimecia won, Edea would have been painted in a much different light. Look at Deling. Was Deling a good president? Fuck no. The man was a megalomaniac and a narcissist. But he's painted as the victim, Ultimecia as the villain." Seifer tilted his head. "That's your problem- it was mine, too. We always had to be the hero, and when you boil it all down, there's no such thing."

"No such-"

"Look, at Galbadia, they make the new recruits watch footage of distressing images for hours. You know, executing war prisoners, torture, autopsies on babies, children, rape footage, every shitty thing in the world, you sit and watch it. They make you watch that shit until you can eat popcorn while you're doing it. You learn that the world is crap and the work you do is shit, too, and that's okay, because it's not like you're inventing the fucking wheel. You're doing shit work in a shit world. You don't have any illusions about who you are and what you do."

"But not at Balamb Garden," And there's real bitterness in his voice now. "At Balamb, they make _heroes_. They tell you that you're fighting for the right side, the good side, when all you're really doing is lining the pockets of people who make a living off spilling blood. The sad thing is, Cid probably thought he was saving us, at least at first. Saving us...that's almost funny now. Like training us to be what we were was anything but murdering whatever childhoods we had left to make us into soldiers, into the people that could kill his fucking wife. Not that it mattered, in the end."

"You…heard about Edea?"

"Yeah. Ranmor told me last week."

_Ranmor, leaning on the cell's wall, arms folded, as two security guards held him down. Blood from his lip ran an almost constant string to the ground. _

_"Your sorceress is dead," he'd said. "Or was she your mother? Your lover? It must be hard to keep track. Strung up like a fish on her own line. We could do you the same way, if you're feeling nostalgic."_

"I'm sorry you had to hear that way," said Quistis, imagining what Ranmor would have said. "Her funeral was very lovely. We planted a lilac bush over her grave. She's buried by the shore, by that place we used to look at the stars, remember?"

"You don't _actually_ believe she offed herself, do you?" he asked. The look on her face tells him she did. "Edea was a lot of things, but she was tough, and she wasn't afraid of Ranmor. It was Ranmor that was afraid of her. He didn't want to kill a woman, especially not a woman that had once run an orphanage. He couldn't afford that kind of PR shit, not the first year in office. But he didn't want the stain of her continued existence, either- the idea that Galbadia had allowed a once hostile vessel for the sorceress, one that had assassinated its President, to live. I mean, think about it- Edea doesn't want to put everyone through the pain of her execution, so she kills herself in her own home? It doesn't make sense."

"What are you saying, then? Somebody else killed her?" The color has drained out of her face.

"I'm saying," says Seifer quietly, "That Ranmor was more afraid of her than she was of him. He didn't want to color his presidency with murdering a woman, no matter who she was. He didn't want her blood on his hands- not directly, anyway."

"Ranmor was a hero from the first sorceress conflict, he would have-"

Seifer laughs. "Like I said, there's no such thing as a hero, Quistis."

She rolls her eyes. "So what, we're all the villains?"

"Neither. We're just us. Couple of orphans fate washed ashore, trying to carve out a place in the world."

"You actually believe in fate?"

Seifer shrugs. "Does it really matter what we believe in?"

"You used to think so."

"People change."

"When it's convenient, they think they do," she returns.

He laughs. "What pisses you off the most? That, when you think about it, you've been somebody's bitch all these years, or that you've served the wrong masters?"

She glares at him. "Don't act like you can understand loyalty, when the only person you've ever served is yourself," she snaps at him. "You thought Ultimecia would be a stepping stone to greatness, you thought you'd make a name for yourself defending some puerile ideal you read in a book once, and by the time you figured what she really was, she had her hooks too deep in you for you to get out of it-"

Seifer interrupts by clapping, but it is a mocking salute. "Nicely put. But you wanna talk about loyalty, you should look beyond putting on a uniform and gagging on your knees for a death sentence before you start lecturing me on _definitions_."

"You should talk about death sentences- you all but issued your own," snaps Quistis.

"And how many did you issue yourself?" he retorts, she notices in hindsight they are both standing now, snarling into each other's faces. "The only difference between you and me is that your side won. If our sides had been reversed, you'd be sitting here instead of me. You're a killer, just the same as me."

"I never killed anyone I didn't have to," she says.

"Neither did I," he replies evenly.

_And maybe he's right._

They fall silent for a moment, then slowly sit back down.

"Are you sorry?" she asked. "About any of it?"

"I'm not going to apologize." He continues, and she notices that he's neatly avoided the question. "I don't want anyone to forgive me. That's not the way it's supposed to work. Soldiers don't apologize for being soldiers. Wolves don't apologize for being wolves."

"We don't live in the wild," retorts Quistis, folding her arms. "We live in a civilized society."

"We create societies, Quistis- it's not like we're born into them. Societies run by people like Ranmor and Deling, who make up rules out of fear instead of common sense."

"How is it all supposed to work, then?"

He gestures around him, grinning ironically. "Clearly, I don't have all the answers, do I?"

Quistis sits back in the cell, feeling more tired than she has in a long time.

_She doesn't have the answers, either._

**Eleven days.**


	7. Chapter 7

"Yeah, this is Xu."

Used to Xu's curt manner of answering the phone, Quistis skips the introductions and launches into conversation right away. "I need you to cross-reference any ticket purchased to the Centrian continent with known members, active or inactive, of the Galbadian military, within the last month. I want you to send the results to my garden e-mail, using a secure server, and encrypt it. I need it as soon as possible."

"Do I want to know why you need this done?"

"Probably not."

"Do I want to know how your mission is going?"

"Definitely not."

"Goodbye, Xu."

A long suffering sigh on the other end. "Give me twenty four hours," says her friend.

Quistis sets down the phone on her bedside table.

_Maybe it's nothing_, she thinks. _Maybe Seifer is wrong. It certainly wouldn't be the first time._

But maybe…it's something, and if it is, she has to know.

Quistis lies back on the hotel bed and blows a big breath of air out of her cheeks, staring at the ceiling.

This mission is becoming more complicated by the day.

…..

…..

…

..

An hour before bed, Quistis gets tired of pushing her dinner around on her plate and digs through Seifer Almasy's folder. She sick of the low ground- she wants something in the folder that will catch him off guard- that will shift the momentum between them, even for a second. If she is honest, she wants something to wound him with, but Quistis has never been entirely comfortable with the sadistic side of her personality, preferring to hide it under the guise of duty, where she can color it as a virtue. Rifling randomly, her eye snags on one particular headline.

**GALBADIAN DEPARTMENT OF CHILD SERVICES: CASE NO. 415-79SA**

_Subject: Seifer Almasy_

_Parents: Alida and Jaxon Almasy_

_DOB: December 22nd_

_Profile: Subject, age 5, witness to parents' murder/suicide. Jaxon Almasy, former Galbadian soldier, suffering from PTSD, first fatally shot his wife before turning the gun on himself. Child was present at time of incident, no physical injuries reported. See Police Report: GA 715924-82._

Quistis blinks. Sitting up, she keeps rifling through the folder before pulling out a police report.

**_GALBADIAN POLICE DEPARTMENT INCIDENT REPORT: GA715924-82_**

_Incident Type: MURDER/SUICIDE_

_Address of Occurrence: 511 WILLOWBROOK EDEN LANE_

_How received: RADIO-1_

_Type of Premise: RESIDENTIAL_

_Copes to: GALBADIAN CHILD WELFARE/SERVICES_

_Date Reported: 12/28_

_Time Reported: 1807_

_Office Assaulted or Killed: NO_

_Weapons or Objects Used: M9 HANDGUN, SERIAL NUMBER 19118641, CONFIRMED STANDARD ISSUE FOR GALBADIAN MILITIA_

_Reporting Officer: CPL LOISTON_

_Other Officers Notified: LT ADERES_

_Arrival Time: 1810_

_Processed by: CPL LOUISTON_

_Domestic: YES_

_Complaint Status: RESOLVED_

_Car no: 14_

_District: 2_

**_NARRATIVE:_**

_RECEIVED RADIO CALL FROM DISPATCH REGARDING NOISE COMPLAINT. COMPLAINT ISSUED BY MARIAH STOURT, RESIDENT OF 509 WILLBROOK EDEN LANE. _

_UPON ARRIVAL, THERE WAS NO ANSWER AT RESIDENCE. CPL LOISTON ENTERED THROUGH REAR DOOR INTO KITCHEN, WHERE ALIDA ALMASY, 23, WAS FOUND LYING ON BACK, DECEASED, GUNSHOT WOUND IN CHEST. SON, SEIFER ALMASY, 5, WAS FOUND PROXIMATE TO MOTHER, APPLYING BANDAIDS TO CHEST IN AN EFFORT TO REVIVE. CHILD WAS COVERED IN WHAT LATER WAS IDENTIFIED TO BE FATHER'S BLOOD, SLIGHT CIRCULAR BRUISE BELIEVED TO BE MUZZLE STAMP AT LEFT TEMPLE, OTHERWISE NO INJURIES REPORTED. FATHER'S BODY WAS FOUND IN ENTRYWAY TO LIVING ROOM (SEE DIAGRAM), BULLETWOUND TO RIGHT TEMPLE, DOA. GUNPOWDER ON JACON ALMASY'S HAND CORROLATES WITH MURDER/SUICIDE, SLUG EXCAVATED FROM ALIDA ALMASY A MATCH BULLETS FOUND IN THE GUN AND MR. ALMASY. JACON ALMASY POSSIBLY SUFFERING FROM PTSD, HAD BEEN DISCHARGED FROM GALBADIAN ARMY 2 MONTHS._

_LIVING RELATIVES: CHILD, SEIFER ALMASY HAS BEEN CURRENTLY ENTRUSTED TO GALBADIAN CHILD SERVICES._

_UPDATE: CHILD HAS BEEN MOVED TO CARE OF EDEA KRAMER, ALL STATUS UPDATES ON CASE WILL BE PROCESSED VIA PHONE BY CASEWORKER SERAH BAILES, CASE #19495-71-SA._

Pictures have been included in the report- two bodies, draped by white sheets peppered red, lie sprawled out on a linoleum floor. A woman's hand protruding from one of the sheets, wearing a gold wedding band. Blood spatter on the walls of the otherwise innocuous kitchen, staining the sunflower wallpaper with bright red sunburst blotches.

Blinking, Quistis swallows and flips back to the social services report.

**_Psychological Evaluation per Richard Colsom, MD, re: Patient 6457-15:_**

_Initial treatment for shock-(Midazolamm, 2ml). Slight bruise in left temple, but no sign of other physical injuries. Social services reports that child remained uncommunicative for a period of three days after referral, refusing food and water. (IV started on second day. 3mg/kg nc-s.) Subject, age 5, shows above average intelligence and a solid understanding of his current situation in addition to the permanence of death. _

_Subject resists paternal figures with respect to authority/care and care seems to identify best with maternal figures. Subject responds to feelings of anxiety and distress with anger, displacement, has the capacity for violent behavior (particularly towards paternal figures) that should be monitored, and which suggests antagonistic relationship with father may have been prolonged. Subject seems to deliberately avoid attachment to items, people- responds to concern with anger, indifference. Currently entrusted to care of Mrs. Edea Kramer._

**_Update_**_ 1/16: Mrs. Kramer reports that Seifer is now communicating with her and the other children, and is once again eating normal portions at meals. Sleep patterns are also beginning to stabilize. _

_All future updates will be transferred through Serah Bailes, Case Worker for GCSW, CASE #19495-71-SA._

Quistis closes the folder. She does not need to reference the case worker folders- she knew the child version of Seifer Almasy well enough. Back then, Seifer's moods had been quicksilver, changing from energetic to angry in the span of seconds, often in ways that seemed irrelevant to his surroundings. Even then, it seemed he was burning with emotions beyond him, though she had not understood it then.

She understands him now, in a way. Edea had saved him from becoming a ward of the state- she had taken him from a government boarding house with four silent white walls and the hell of his mind and placed him on a sandy, sunlit beach with no traces of raised voices or gunpowder. It did not account for every reason that he had done what he did, for what he later became- to say that would be the same as saying a typhoon is caused by wind alone.

The Seifer she had known even as a boy had been desperately driven, hungry for power and recognition. Quistis knew as well as anyone that Seifer could never completely escape that small house, that bright kitchen with blood and brains and bone splattered on the linoleum, knew that our ghosts never completely give us up. Just as Edea had for her, Edea had given Seifer a different direction, a chance at a different life.

Consciously or not, he would have followed Edea Kramer into hell, no matter who wore her face.

Quistis closes her eyes for a moment, trying to organize her thoughts.

_Seifer in the prison, eye blackened, cheeks sunken, his wrists chained and hanging between his legs._

_Seifer in the police report, his face streaked with old tear tracks, a red flush creeping to a bruise at the side of his small temple._

_The place where his own father had pointed a gun at his head._

The two faces seem to blur for a moment, and melt into a face that is neither bruised nor scarred, blurry with the dust of an old memory before it comes into focus.

_It is the end of that evening's story time. The noble knight Taren has entered the dark cave of mysteries in search of the Sword of Songs, and had just been about to slay the Witch Queen of Ardrear and her vicious Blood Hounds when Edea announces it is time for bed. The other children are shuffling off to their rooms, but Seifer is still sitting on Edea's bed, his eyes positively alight with excitement. The happy expression is almost out of place on his normally scornful face._

_"Seifer, it's time for bed," she reminds him, inching towards the edge of the mattress. "Matron said so."_

_Rather than balk at the order, however, Seifer glances over at her. "Quisty, you wanna know something?"_

_She looks at him warily. Seifer does not often invite confidences. "Um…okay."_

_"Someday, I'm gonna be a knight." There is a wild light in his eyes, filled with equal parts joy and desperation. It fascinates and unnerves her for reasons the child part of her can't understand._

_"Seifer, there's no such thing." She replies, impatiently. "It's just a story."_

_But Seifer is undeterred. "Doesn't matter. I'm still gonna be one, when I grow up. You'll see." _

_At a loss for words, Quistis slides off the bed, heading off to her room with Selphie. "Goodnight, Seifer."_

_"Don't worry, Quisty," he calls after her, "I'll protect you."_

_Years later, shoulder to shoulder in the Training Center for Instructor Marek's final exam as the T-Rexaur bears down on them, jaws snapping and its roar ear-splitting. "Don't worry, Trepe," he says, grinning. "I'll protect you."_

_Alone in her dorm, the dim light from the door softening his features, his skin warm against hers. "When we become SeeDs, I'll protect you."_

_I'll protect you._

**_I'll protect you._**

She remembers it being funny (if sweet) each time he said it, if for different reasons.

As a child, he usually _caused_ most of her predicaments, as a cadet, he was often in more trouble than he could handle himself, and as a SeeD…well, he had never reached that marker. Of the two of them, **he** was the brash one, the irresponsible one, the brave and belligerent one that charged headfirst into situations without thinking. It was **him** that needed protecting- the little boy, the young man, and now he's being sentenced to death, and all she can do is hold up a tape recorder-

Drops of moisture are falling with loud drips onto the case file, blurring the print. Quistis quickly shoves it into her bag and dials room service.

"One bottle of Odine's Whiskey, please."

She drinks it straight from the bottle, the liquid burning her throat and numbing her thoughts to a dull roar.

**Ten more days, **she tells herself.

She then imagines Seifer in his cell, thinking the same thing, and takes another long drink.

…..

….

…

..

.

"Well, good morning, sunshine," says Seifer in a louder tone that Quistis deems strictly necessary, grinning at her. "Long night?"

Quistis gives him a look that clearly conveys her wish for silence as she sits down, silently grateful that the cell is not as bright as the hallways.

"You never _could_ hold your alcohol."

Quistis remains silent. Though she has built up a fair tolerance over the years from her days as a cadet, what she drank last night would make a Trabian sailor sick. It feels like there's an eel thrashing around in her stomach, and her head feels like nothing so much as a giant flesh pincushion.

Instead of telling him this, however, she starts the tape recorder and asks, "What did the connection with the sorceress feel like? How and when was it formed?"

He is getting a tremendous amount of pleasure from her predicament, and hiding it poorly. "Felt like a splinter in your brain that didn't leave, and I couldn't tell you _how_ it was formed- hurt like hell, though. I still get headaches, sometimes, which I'm sure you can relate to, right now. How much _did_ you have to drink?"

She glares at him. There are fresh cuts on him today- his lip is split open and it looks like he's tried to reset one of his own fingers. She wants to ask, but she knows that they have this place bugged to the teeth…not that he'll tell her anyway.

The only thing she can think of is that Ranmor wants answers Seifer's not giving. Her only comfort is that they won't kill him- not before his time is up.

Seifer cracks his knuckles. "All right, different question, then. Who was your first kiss?"

The glare intensifies.

"Oh come on, I won't tell anybody."

He's right. He won't.

It is with this strange, sick impunity that she finally speaks.

"Zell," she says, finally. It was hardly a kiss- two curious children with their eyes squeezed shut, mashing their lips together for a moment before pulling back, utterly baffled as to what should have happened. Then Matron had called them in for cookies, and the encounter had been set aside in light of more important ventures. Now that she thinks of it, really, it hardly counts as a kiss at all.

"The chickenwuss? You're kidding me." He breaks into laughter.

She folds her arms, glaring. "Who was yours, then?"

"You, actually," he says, without preamble, and suddenly she's 15 again in the gloomy, restless dark of the training center, his hands sliding under her jacket, his breath hot on her cheek-

A look passes between them, heated at the memory, but it is no longer the same fire.

The boy he had been was killed by a sorceress, and the girl she was then has since been eroded over the years into something flat and dutiful and nearly without a trace of that once-familiar fire.

The moment passes.

Quistis pulls out a sheet of paper and marks something with her pen, more to distract herself than anything else. "Did the Sorceress put any stock into the story of Hyne?"

"I don't know. We never discussed it."

"Never?"

"Let's just say that Ultimecia was more interested in her own godhood than anyone else's."

She tries not to look at him today- all she can see is the little boy with the runny nose and the muzzle stamp on his temple, putting band aid's over his mother's sucking chest wound.

"Can I bring you anything here, Seifer?" she blurts.

"What, you mean besides a hacksaw in a cake?" he asks. "Thought prisoners weren't allowed items from the outside."

"I'm not particularly fussed as to how this prison is run, frankly."

He looks at her for a moment, and she swears he can read her mind.

"In that case, I'll take a pack of Marlboro Lights," he says, eyebrows raised.

"Those things will kill you." The words are out before she can take them back.

But Seifer only smiles at her. "I'll take my chances."


	8. Chapter 8

The walls have ears. And eyes. And tongues.

_Ms. Trepe,_

_Though I feel we have been very clear on this matter in the past, may I remind you that no items are to be brought to the prisoner, however innocuous they may seem. Please remember that you are a guest of the Galbadian Government, and that guest privileges can always be revoked._

_Sincerely,_

_Garek__ Tamber_

_Presidential Secretary_

_Galbadian__ Office_

_Suite 7A_

_..._

_.._

_._

_Mr. Tamber,_

I am well aware of how yourself and the administration believe this prison should be run. I am also aware, that under the Jenova Convention of 1211:

_11.4.1-All prisoners of war are to be supplied with food and water sufficient to maintain an acceptable quality of life not to fall below two thousand calories per day in the case of females, 2300 in the case of males.  
>12.6.2-No unnecessary destruction or suffering will be inflicted upon the prisoner, including humiliating or degrading treatment.<em>

Though within the strictures of the convention, parties to the conflict may take such measures of control and security in regard to protected persons as may be necessary as a result of the war; you may or may not be aware that we are no longer at war, and such strictures are wholly unnecessary. If treatment of the prisoner continues as such, I will have no hesitation in reporting your conduct to the International Authority for Human Rights, as well as the sovereign government of Esthar and any other groups that may benefit from such information. I have already taken documentation to this effect, and have taken the liberty of making several copies, should it become necessary to make such information public.

_Most Sincerely,_

_Quistis__ Trepe_

_SeeD__ id.__ 0178414 _

_..._

_..._

_..._

_.._

_._

_Ms. Trepe,_

As secretary to the Galbadian President, I would advise against threatening the Galbadian authorities in any way. Continued defiance on your part will result in our reporting to your superiors as to the appropriateness of your appointment, as well as your continued standing as a mercenary in the employ of Balamb Garden.

Sincerely,  
>Grek Tamber<br>Presidential Secretary  
>Galbadian Office<br>Suite 7A

_..._

_..._

_..._

_.._

_._

_Mr. Tamber,_

_I would welcome your report to my supervisors and any other higher establishment you find relevant, (as it will no doubt, as you say, report my poor conduct to the proper authorities), and also make very public your vast and numerous indiscretions concerning the treatment of your prisoners, and save me the trouble of doing so._

_As to whom to contact, may I be so bold as to suggest Cid Kramer, or perhaps, my current contractor, Laguna Loire, who was foremost in petitioning for better internment of prisoners during his last political campaign?_

_I hope, as we have now made ourselves clear to one another, we can now carry on with our business as per usual, without inconvenience to one another. Having had this most educational conversation, I am hopeful that the prisoners conditions will improve._

_Sincerely yours,_

_Quistis__ Trepe_

_SeeD__ id: 0178414_

She receives no further e-mails, which is a shame, because they help to pass the time.


	9. Chapter 9

Quistis does better than a pack of Marlboro Lights- she brings a bag filled with items from the local gourmet deli, too, located two blocks from her hotel: fresh figs, a loaf of bread, assorted cheeses and a tin of smoked herrings. She also brings an apple, which they split between them. The way Seifer slowly rolls each bite around in his mouth, as if tasting food for the same time, is not lost on Quistis.

She starts the tape recorder. "Did the Sorceress come into contact with anyone else with current political affiliations? Did anyone agree to aid the Sorceress's aims, in exchange for personal gain?"

Seifer tears off a hunk of bread and pops it in his mouth. "I'm not interested in digging anyone else's grave for them. I won't give you any names. Besides," he says, "Youll be happy to know that most of the people that Ultimecia used, she disposed of."

No names, then, though she hadn't really expected Seifer to give any. He is many things, but never a rat.

She starts a different line of questioning. "What were the Sorceress's eventual political aims? What structure would she have set to rule, if her primary plans were carried out to completion?"

When he speaks, it's not with the dull, flat tones of recitation, it's with a voice laced thick with memory. "She didn't...she didn't think that way. Her plans were...like a dream. They weren't anything like a human would build, like something someone sane would plan out in steps. She wanted one thing, and after that, after the world had burned down to an ember, she'd have the silence to think in. That was what appealed to her most, the idea of a clean slate. It was like...a child playing with blocks, where the fun isn't in the construction, it's in knocking it over." A pause. "How'd you get the scar on her elbow?"

She blinks at him, taken off balance by the transition. Her questions are linear, based in a single thing, but his wander.

"A training exercise, when I was younger," she answers.

"Wouldn't Kadowaki have healed it?" Hes started on the peach now, the drips of juice snagging in his beard. She makes a mental note to bring an electric razor for him, next time. She can bring a plastic scissors, too, and give him a haircut.

"She would have," she unconsciously rubs at her elbow, remembering the wound. "But I never reported it."

"Because you weren't supposed to be in the Training Center in the first place."

At her surprised look, he breaks into a laugh. "Used to go in there all the time, myself." He pulls up the pant of his prison uniform, revealing a nasty series of circular punctures, each long healed and a light, faded pink. "Got ambushed by a T-Rexaur my first year when I snuck in one night- I was lucky to get away. Stuck my gunblade in his eye when he grabbed hold of my legstole a couple hi-potions from the infirmary and hoped the wound didnt go septic."

Quistis remembers the old T-Rexaur with one eye- it had taken five JCs to take it down in her Battle Tactics Class in her second year. Seifer had been extremely lucky. "One Eye? she says, remembering the uninspired nickname theyd given the beast. That was you?"

He grins, and for a moment, that same cocky young man looks out at her, leaning on his gunblade, practicing his swagger. "Yeah, that was me. Instructor Green wouldve had me shot if he knew. You remember Instructor Green's class? Remember serving that detention-"

_Of course she does. _

It was her first and only detention, courtesy of Seifer himself, given to both of them for arguing in class during Instructor Green's Most Sacred Lecture of GF Compatibility. It had also been her first time getting drunk on Odine's whiskey, passing the bottle between them when they were supposed to be scrubbing the bathrooms, the taste of his mouth on the rim as exciting as the rebellion as she took long, burning sips-

She blinks, and the warmth of the memory goes out like match, replaced with blue steel walls and the cool draft that seems ever-present in the cell.

She clears her throat. "In terms of tactical planning, which military target did the sorceress presume to be the greatest threat?"

He does not ask her any questions after that...and she hates that she almost wants him to.

**9 days.**


	10. Chapter 10

When Quistis gets back to her hotel room, it's well after dark, and she wants nothing more than to crawl in the shower and attempt to sleep and to never drink Odine's Whiskey again. However, she opens her laptop, and opens her e-mail client.

Welcome, Quistis! You have 3 new messages.

Inbox:

**Subject: How are you doing?**

**Subject: Concert Tickets**

**Fwd: Zell's Latest T-boarding Fiasco…this time with pictures!**

Clicking on Xu's message first, Quistis quickly scans the contents.

_Q,_

_Here's the information on the concert you wanted. You owe me a drink. _

_Or six._

_X_

**Attachment: File/Concert**

**Open?**

**Y….**

Opening…..

**Password?**

...

Message:

Q,

2 Matches Found within date and region specification.

Byron, Selek A.  
>Damas, Brekis L.<p>

-X

Quistis drums her fingers on the keyboard for a moment. While Selphie is by far the resident tech among them, she does have some hacking skills of her own. She slips into the Galbadian Military records with a whisper of code, and begins digging. If the security is anything like Esthar's, she's got about four minutes before she's booted- three minutes before they initiate a trace.

**ACCESS: GALBADIA GOVERNMENT EMPLOYEE DATABASE, UPLOAD DAMAS, BREKIS L._  
><strong>  
>Brekis L. Damas<br>Age: 26  
>Galbadian Military, Soldier Class C: Infantry<br>Magic Class: N/A  
>CombatSpecialty: Secretarial  
>Combat Missions: None to date<br>Status: Active  
>Address:<br>502 Walton Way Apt. G  
>Galbadia Y6495<br>Relatives: Mother, 59 Centrian Island

Quistis immediately closes the window and moves on to the next. They wouldn't hide combat missions, not on a classified database. The guy is a straight paper-pusher, and of no interest to her.

Selek Byron interests her, however. Ranmor wouldn't use a merc off the street, not some deserter that might one day try to blackmail him if the wind shifted. Ranmor was smart. He'd use one of his own, someone bound by loyalty, an older merc whose job was tied to the success of the administration, and closely, so he would have nothing to gain by Ranmor's downfall, because it would mean a loss of steady business. That was the only kind of person Ranmor would trust- a narcissist-borderline sociopath whose main priority was his own neck. This guy would contract high paying jobs that paid gil that he wouldn't have to launder, that he didn't have to conceal. He would live comfortably, out in the open. Edea's death was pegged as a suicide, so he wouldn't have gone through the trouble of covering his tracks, which he would know sometimes kicks up more dust than hides the shoe prints.

Most of all, he wouldn't be expecting anyone to check in the first place.

Cracking her knuckles, Quistis begins typing.

**ACCESS: GALBADIA GOVERNMENT EMPLOYEE DATABASE, UPLOAD BYRON, SELEK A.**

Selek Andres Byron  
>Age: 28<br>Galbadian Military, Soldier Class A  
>Profile: Restricted<p>

"Restricted," she repeats, drumming her fingers.

This is new territory, but Quistis is reasonably certain in her tech skills, and she proceeds with confidence.

_Two more minutes._

**UPLOAD: .  
>.AVF<strong>

INSTALLATION COMPLETE.

UPLOAD QUERY: SELEK BYRON

ACCESS RESTRICTED. OVERRIDE?

Y_

OVERRIDING RESTRICTION...

RETRIEVING INFORMATION FROM DATABASE.

...

RETRIEVAL COMPLETE.

X

__Selek Byron  
>Age: 27<br>Blood type: O positive  
>Magic Class: NA  
>CombatSpecialty: Custodial  
>Combat Missions: 15758-A, 65254-X, Full list under B. Spec 154-6526AX, Classification Level 5<br>Known addresses:  
>1523 Hollister Avenue Apt. 36D,<p>

Deling City  
>Galbadia Y6492<br>Phone number: Unavailable

Secondary:  
>456 Paladin Drive<p>

Laguna Beach Drive  
>Esthar, CX543<br>Phone number: Unavailable

Black Ops team, currently enlisted as guard detail to President Ranmor. Active magic user, Class B, with restriction to GF use.  
>Weapon: Martial Arts- specializes in Sambo and Ninjitsu styles<br>Confirmed Kills: Unlisted

"Combat/Specialty: Custodial" is a military slang term for 'clean-up' crew, and these comprise anything and anything that usually is not on the up and up of military operatives. Traditionally, men selected for 'custodial' work are born loners, no living family, with very few moral scruples and more often than not, borderline personality disorders. Before Rinoa, Squall would have been an excellent candidate.

With seconds to spare, Quistis quickly closes out the window, but not before she commits some important details to memory.

...

...

...

..

.

Quistis answers the phone on the second ring, rising from her shallow sleep to fumble at the receiver.

"Yes?" She never identifies herself on a public phone- it is a habit she retains from her early reconnaissance missions.

"Hello, is this Quistis?" The voice is light and pleasant- it reminds her of the airy breeze that used to whisper over the isolated world of their childhood.

_Sis._

"Hello, Ellone," she replies. Though perhaps most precious to Squall, Ellone had been like a big sister to all of them, and she feels a familiar, if vague, sisterly affection for her. "How was your trip?"

Whether she is talking to Ellone face to face or over the phone, the young woman always seems a world away. True, Ellone has a maze full of memories both her own and not her own, but unlike the others, she has no blood on her hands, and Quistis has always been acutely aware of the distinction.

"Oh, it was very nice, thank you. Winhill is such a pleasant departure from Esthar, and it's so lovely this time of year."

"Did Squall come along with you?"

"No, he was busy, but I stopped by Balamb on the ship. It was nice to see everyone, but I was sorry to miss you."

Quistis has her exhausted her range of appropriate topics for this conversation, and so she waits for Ellone. Thankfully, Ellone picks up the silence after a beat:

"You're wondering why I sent you on the mission."

"It was a General class mission- it was open to any SeeD, not me specifically."

"Forgive me," says Ellone, "But I knew you would take it."

Quistis finds she likes being read by Ellone roughly as much as she liked being read from Ranmor- not at all. "This isn't like the war, Ellone. You can't just send people places without their knowledge or consent."

"I understand your anger," replies Ellone gently. "But whatever your reasons, you accepted the mission willingly, didn't you?"

"And what were your reasons for offering it?"

"I thought it would be good for you and Seifer to see each other again. You were always so close as children, and-"

The rest of Ellone's sentence is drowned out by Quistis inner disbelief. Close? During their childhood, she had given Seifer a bloody nose more than once, he had attempted to bury her alive, put gum in her hair, and willfully disobeyed every single order she had ever attempted to give him, to say nothing of the time he attached her underwear to a flagpole and made Zell salute it, which resulted in a black eye-

Ellone is unaware of Quistis's mental list of wrongs done to her person, and has been talking through it, "-thought you would be a comfort to him in that terrible place."

'Comfort' is not a word that has ever had a place in her and Seifer's relationship, but Quistis decides to leave Ellone her delusions.

Someone should be able to have them, after all.

"When I visited him, he asked about you," continues Ellone, "He asked how you were, what you were doing."

Quistis frowns. Seifer had asked about _her_?

"And before you ask," says Ellone, and there's a hint of a smile in her voice, "It was _my_ idea, not his, for you to come."

"But why?"

"Because I thought you two could help each other, I suppose," replies the young woman simply, leaving Quistis more confused than ever. Static crackles on the phone then, and her voice cuts out for a moment. "I'm sorry, Quistis, but I'm on the train right now...afraid the connection isn't very good. Please send my regards to Seifer...and Quistis?"

"Yes?"

"Take care of him...if he'll let you."


	11. Chapter 11

"Remember that night on the beach, when we set off those fireworks?"

She's brought a bag of cherries this time, which she remembers as being among Seifer's favorite as children. They've taken to throwing the pits into the commode, seeing who can make the most shots. So far, it's Seifer…by a pit.

Quistis remembers the fireworks. They all do. Seifer's eyes had lit up like green lanterns as the rockets launched, a lit stick held steady in his fat little fist as he touched it to the fuse and set the wire spitting.

They had all gaped up at the night sky in wonder and a little fear at the anarchy of fire and chemicals bursting into sparks of color and sound above them. Seifer had grinned over at her as she clapped her hands, and she'd felt a rush of affection for him, then, bound up in their mutual mischief. In that moment, for that moment, she had belonged there, with them.

_With him._

And for an orphan, belonging is like food or water- it is not something you forget for those brief moments you find it.

Her feelings for him have always raced like fire through her veins, unpredictable and prone to extremes in all directions, and they burn in her now, too, directing her mind and her heart to places they were never meant to go.

She has accumulated plenty of defenses against the man, but she has no defense against the boy, the tow-haired child that had run around the old stone cottage with her, hiding behind crates and racing down the stone steps, with more than one skinned knee to show for it. They were not always enemies, and were at times prone to be allies, forming temporary partnerships when the situation suited. Seifer was a good ally, when he wanted to be. And when he would sit in the flower field, she would join her there sometimes. They didn't say anything, but sat shoulder to shoulder- she had loved him, in moments like those, when he would sit still long enough to be loved.

She had loved him as a cadet, too, all reckless fire and honest abandon, her fists bunched in his jc uniform and the wall of the training center cold and hard against her back. She had loved him then because he was a bright bird in a cage of carrier pigeons, because he was as wild and brave as she wanted to be.

Her affection for Seifer had always been as brutal as a fist- it opened and closed from moment to moment- it could caress or wound her depending on his words, his mood, depending on her strength.

And suddenly, with this memory, she's not only looking the other way while they execute her classmate, her fellow soldier, her lover, now she's turning a blind eye as they kill her little brother, too, the boy she'd built sandcastles with and set off fireworks with, the boy whose hands burned like fire on her skin in the dark of the Training Center, whose voice reaches out to her now, from the dark of a prison cell-

And what good is all this? All nostalgia and reliving what they used to be, always 'remember when?' 'remember this?' when the little girl that lived those things is dead, gone from the moment she first closed her hand around the whip's cold, metallic handle-

"Don't," she says, looking away from him.

"Don't what?" he said, his eyes narrowing.

It's too much suddenly, this fool errand she's on. Too much of her life has been wrapped in his- she can feel the thought of his absence tearing at her already.

"Look at me, Quistis."

She can't quite meet his eyes. Her chest is burning, a heat that threatens to spread to her eyes, and she knows if she cries now that she might never stop.

"I said _fucking look at me_!" He shouts, and for the first time, there is real anger in his voice.

His hand smacks into the side of the cell, and she jumps with the impact, snapping her gaze to his. "If you're going to do your job, do it. Don't be a coward. You could always look your enemy in the eye before, right? Why stop now?"

"You aren't my enemy," she manages.

_Sibling. Lover. Classmate. Bully. It is a strange list. _

_But not enemy. Never enemy._

_Why? _

**You know why, stupid girl.**

Seifer is not privy to her mental battle. "I seem to remember, not long ago, being on opposite sides of a war."

She still can't quite meet his eyes. "That doesn't make us enemies."

"What does it make us, then?"

She has no answer for that.

"Why does it have to be something?" she snaps, angry now. "It's always _something_ with you, it always has to have a name, a label, because-"

"Everything's something, Quistis, whether you want to ignore it or not. I mean, if I'm not your enemy, then who is?"

No answer for that, either.

It's **her** that's supposed to be asking the questions here, not him, damnit.

He chuckles. "Just go home, Quistis."

"Don't tell me to go home." she snaps at him. "I'm not a child."

Though in this moment, she knows she sounds like one. She feels like one. A child still clutching at her mother's skirt, wishing things could be different, wishing the tides could turn the other way, wishing she could turn back time itself and make things better.

_Helpless_.

She balls her fists, the nails cutting into her palms.

He's still smiling at her, but the expression lacks its usual sharp edges. "Why'd you come here, anyway?"

_Because I was ordered to_, she wants to say, but that isn't the truth.

_Because I wanted to save you_, she wants to say, too, but that's a more terrible lie than the first.

"Because I wanted to hate you." she says, finally.

"And how's that going for you?" he asks, in that direct way of his. And that's Seifer. Yes and no and never and forever, even in a prison cell with eight days to live.

She doesn't answer him. They both know it's not going well.

"Go home, Quistis," he says, this time with more understanding than she thought he could ever possess. It's almost worse than being mocked. "You don't have to be here for all of this."

"I want to be."

He arches a brow, his smile scornful. "People will say we're in love."

She resists the urge to roll her eyes, but only just. "I'll be going away for awhile. But I'll be back."

"Is that a threat?" he asks.

"No, it's a promise," she says, wanting him to understand.

His look is indistinguishable. "I'll be here," he says, simply, and she thinks that maybe, he does.

…

….

…

..

.

Quistis sits behind the wheel of the rental vehicle for a moment, watching the sun set over the spires. She is on the cusp of something important- she feels the gravity of it like a fledgling bird before it first leaves the nest, trying its wings.

They both know she can't go home anymore- not home to Garden, and she has never known any other.

The truth is that there is no home for her, for him- the only home they ever had was wrapped up in a troubled woman, and she's dead now.

Balamb has a SeeD outpost on the outskirts of town- she stops there and un-junctions Siren.

What she's about to do, she'll do alone.

…..

….

…

..

.

_"Get up."_

When he opens his eyes, Ranmor is standing over him, and before he can move, two guards have pinned him to the wall.

The President stands in front of him, arms folded, those dark eyes searching his.

"Here you are, young Almasy, at the end of your pitiful, wasted life, and still you will do nothing to benefit the world. You could change it, could help us to understand a way to utilize the sorceress's power in our favor-"

"You didn't learn a fucking thing from the first war at all, did you?" asks Seifer. "A sorceress nearly burned the world to a matchstick twice now, and you want one as a weapon? Don't you get it? You're just insects, messing with gods you don't under-"

The rest of his sentence is interrupted by a knee to his stomach, effectively cutting off his air.

"I'll ask you again. And again and again until your answer changes."

"Fuck you," manages Seifer, gasping for breath. "I won't tell you _shit_."

"A shame, as I said," says Ranmor, and there is cold fury in his eyes now. "Edea had much the same attitude."

Still struggling for breath, Seifer glares up at him.

Ranmor would be taken aback at the raw hatred there, if that same emotion did not consume him also.

"You are going to tell me what I want to know, whether now, or in the end."

"You have," gasps Seifer, "Nothing_…nothing _left to threaten me with."

"Not true. There are days before your very painful execution, you know. Eight more days for you to suffer, and believe me, there are still things that I can take away. Wouldn't it a shame, for example, for something to happen to your little

visitor? That kind, honest young woman who brings you such pretty gifts?"

Seifer's gaze goes from furious to utterly blank, like a turtle tucking swiftly into its shell. It is as good as a confession.

Ranmor smiles. "She is a flower in this little wasteland of a world you have left, isn't she? It would be such…a _shame_…if something were to happen to her."

Instead of the shock he expects, however, Ranmor gets a smile. "Don't send anybody after Trepe….you're not prepared to lose," he manages.

The next blow sends his skull crashing back against the side of the walls. Spots bloom in his eyes, but he manages to stay conscious. He gets to one knee before the guards grab him again.

Ranmor steps back. "Release him," he tells the guards, who let him fall to the floor. "Let's give him some time to think about it."

Seifer rolls to his side, letting the cool floor soothe his burning eye. There is a painful sucking, squelching feeling to one of his teeth when he touches it with his tongue, but the throb in his side hurts more than anything else. He waits until the footsteps have faded before letting out an agonizing cough, letting the blood spray the floor in a way that reminds him of sunflower wallpaper and every other shitty thing that rots in his memory.

**Eight more days.**

…

..

.

Ranmor steps out from the cell, adjusting the lapels of his suit. The boy's reaction when he mentioned the girl was strange, to be sure, but Ranmor knows that the girl is precisely where he hurts most. The boy can take a beating- physical pain is nearly nothing to a soldier like Seifer. But to lose his foster mother, to lose this girl, these things will cripple him far beyond any broken rib or broken finger.

If it comes to that, he will use the girl, and if he does, he will make the boy watch.

…..


	12. Chapter 12

Galbadia is a beautiful country- beautiful, but cold. Quistis thinks her perception of the place is colored by her knowledge of the man who created it, and _how_ he created it- through fear and ignorance and a thorough abuse of power.

Due to its location, the country enjoys about 10 clear days every year, and Quistis seems to have stumbled on one of them. A cold blue sky is draped over Deling city today, and even Quistis has to admire Deling's classical taste in architecture, down to the Arc de Triomphe, built to commemorate the blood spilt to repel Adele. Monuments that will crack and age and grow moss along the crevices before they are built up again for new wars, new bloodshed, proving that man, ultimately, commemorates only what he is destined to repeat.

Today, she has settled herself into one of Galbadia's many small coffee shops, wedging herself into a small booth in the back that faces the wall. She is dressed in civs; a pair of blue jeans, a blue sweater, and a pair of gold hoop earrings that almost reach her shoulders, pulling her hair up into a sloppy ponytail. She blends in easily with Galbadia's young, fashionable crowd.

She has lost her ever-present Galbadian tail, but harbors no illusions that it will stay lost. Galbadia's army has only grown in strength since Ranmor's appointment, though the new President has the sense to keep its growth subtle. Deling city is a network of whispers and connections that will make it hard to shake her shadow for long.

For now, she is taking advantage of the small shop's caramel cappuccino and its unsecured wireless connection.

Taking a sip of the frothy drink, she opens her e-mail client, immediately selecting the message from 'Southern Gaian Islands Coroner's Office' and reading over it for the second time.

_Dear Alyce Krane,_

_As requested, attached is the coroner's report for Edea M. Kramer. The account you provided will be charged 10 gil for this service._

_Sincerely,_

_Daila__ Rogir_

_Assistant to Dr. Allen Sitrom_

_Medical Examiner _

A coroner's report is available to the general public for anyone, but she is not finding this report particularly helpful. Cause of death: asphyxiation caused by ligature includes no specific descriptions, and she finds no other subtleties within the report. She has wasted a fake alias, and 10 gil.

She needs pictures of the autopsy, and pictures are not available with the report. She will have to go to the medical examiner's office for those, and she does not have the time. Instead, she steers the computer to the medical examiner's website. Dr. Sitrom has recently converted his records into PDF files and stored them on a personal server- she knows this because he had spoken to her and Xu about it at the funeral. Dr. Sitrom did not strike her as someone especially gifted with common sense, but then, he is a man that spends his days with the dead- he has very little appreciation for the cunning and treachery of the living.

He is also an older man that understands technology's capacity for storage, but not its vulnerability.

But then, who would want to tamper with an islands medical records, really?

The server's protection is minimal, and it cracks easily. It takes only seconds for her to find the records she wants.

Once she has them, however, she hesitates. Her last image of Edea, however tragic, had been one of peace- her hands folded serenely over a bouquet of star lilies, a purple scarf wound gently around her throat. She is about to dispel that image forever, and her inclination is to prolong it.

Time, however, is a luxury other people have. She opens the files.

They are not as terrible as she prepared herself for. Edea's complexion on the metal slab is pale and slightly blue, a flushed pallor that had been hidden by the powder and blush applied for the public viewing. One picture details the petichial hemorrhages of the eye- bright red blooms of color on the white of the eyeball. These were expected.

The second set of photos details the damage in the neck, and these capture her attention instantly. Instead of the inverted bruise one expects from a body applying vertical pressure to the rope, this bruise is straight, with a slight variation of a smaller less prominent line just below it. The distinction is subtle, but present none the less.

Quistis blinks, the action like a camera shutter closing.

Sitrom is an island doctor surrounded by failing hearts and drowning victims- he would not look twice at such a wound unless he had ever had occasion to inflict it.

She has her answer.

Closing the laptop, she shoulders the bag and ducks out into the cool afternoon air.


	13. Chapter 13

Selek Byron prides himself on the fact that he can be jarred awake by a pin drop in a snowstorm (and on one occasion, actually had, when an enemy dropped a grenade pin in his tent during a blizzard in Trabia).

Still, he has only the faint scent of gardenia and the flutter of a shadow across his eyelids before he feels the jerk against his wrists, and by then, it is too late.

When he opens his eyes, there is a shadow already standing at the foot of his bed.

He moves to sit up, only to find that his wrists have been bound with cable ties, the sharp plastic cutting into his flesh as he tries to wrench himself free.

"Good evening, Mr. Byron."

He aims a kick at the intruder- his toes slice cleanly through air. The invader does not flinch.

Desensitization.

Combat experience.

_Shit_.

They haven't killed him yet, however, which is encouraging. They want something. And bartering time is time for planning.

"Who the fuck are you, and what do you want?" he snarls, fighting against his restraints, which , being cable ties, causes them to tighten further, the hard plastic now biting into his wrists.

The shadow moves into the light, revealing a young woman with blonde hair and arctic blue eyes.

Eyes as cold as his can be.

"I'm Quistis Trepe."

_Fuck. It is._

"Never heard of you." he lies. But of course, everyone's heard of her. One of the Liberi Fatali. SeeD rank 30. Garden's only Blue Mage. If he's still alive, it's only because she wants him to be.

Her lips curl. "I'm Edea's daughter. Perhaps you remember **_her_**?"

Selek is silent.

"Right now, you're thinking you're not going to talk. That you're going to wait for an opening and get my neck in a stranglehold, or that when I leave the room you're going to break the headboard with your feet and use one of the wood shards to stick in my throat. And if it were anyone else, you might be right. But it's not. I'm not a middle-aged woman alone in her house baking cookies with my back to you or some fat senator with a heart condition. And if you don't tell me what I want to know, you'll wish you were dead hours before I'll actually do the courtesy of killing you. So. Do you want to do this the easy way, or the hard way?"

"You're one dead bitch," he manages through the fury and the fear that's coiling up tight in his chest.

She shrugs. "Sooner or later, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero. The difference is _how_. You could die in your sleep, or you could die begging."

The bitch isn't going to get in range of his legs, and it's clear she has no intention of leaving the room.

Plan C.

Swinging his legs in up and ignoring the searing pain in his wrists as his body arches, he moves to break the headboard with the hope of spearing some part of her with it on the downswing. His legs get as high as the ceiling fan before she flicks her wrist and his body slumps, unconscious, back down on the mattress.

When Selek Byron opens his eyes again, he is treated to the spectacular shining view from his balcony. It is, however, a little confusing, because the stars are upside down, and the balcony is up.

And that's when he realizes it- he's swinging from it.

The night breeze is cold on his face. The stars are beginning to fade, and there is a thin crimson line along the edge of the city skyline- dawn is approaching.

He cranes his neck upward, and there is Quistis Trepe again, leaning against his banister with the kind of calm that, to anyone else, would appear she was looking forward to the sunrise. She has a cup of coffee beside her, and a tape recorder.

_His_ coffee. _ The fucking bitch is drinking his coffee._

At the movement of his head, she looks down. "Did you sleep well?"

Any reply he would have made is muffled by the constriction in his throat- she has effectively Silenced him. None of his neighbors will be up for a few hours yet, and even if they were, he lives in the penthouse suite- no one could see him unless they were fucking bird watching at four in the morning.

"I thought we could try talking again," she says. "We got off to such a poor start, earlier."

She holds up an item in her hand- as the moonlight hits it, he realizes it's a knife.

"Documentation says I was born near Dollet, but that my parents died as a result of the Sorceress War. I was a ward of the state until Edea Kramer took me into her care. I grew up on the island- I left for a foster home when I was nine and came to Garden when I was ten. Edea was the only real family I ever had...I'm sorry, am I boring you?" asks Quistis, tilting her head.

With the blood rushing to his head, it is difficult to concentrate. His eyes are slipping shut.

"Let me make the conversation more interesting. According to your record you're a borderline sociopath, which means you're entirely concerned with _you_. So, let's talk about the rope that's keeping you up. I'd say it's got about a five hundred and fifty pound limit, which it can sustain your weight for weeks...that is, unless this happens."

With that, she reaches down and begins sawing at the rope that binds him. He shakes his head furiously at her as a few of the braided sections spring free, and the rope jerks him a few centimeters down. "Or, we could play piñata, I suppose, if this gets tiresome."

He tries to speak, to no avail. 

"No?" she asks.

The blood is making his head throb. He nods.

Quistis runs the blade of the knife along her thumb, producing a thin film of blood in the blade's wake as she talks. "Tell me, did you come up behind her in the kitchen? Or maybe it was the garden? I'm guessing the garden, since they found dirt under her fingernails. She always used to hum to herself when she was planting, and I'm sure that it was easy to sneak up behind her and slip the cord around her neck, jerk it tight, and wait out the struggle."

Quistis has once again placed the knife against the cord, and rubs it against the rope. Another group of cords in the robe spring free.

"You're wondering what gave you away, aren't you?" asks Quistis.

Selek struggles against his restraints, but it is futile. He can see the ground below him. 23 stories up...

"When a person hangs themselves, it leaves an inverted 'V' bruise, which is easy to distinguish from ligature strangulation, because strangulation leaves a straight-line bruise across the neck. Edea's neck had only a straight-line bruise, with no indication of the v-shape that should have been left on her neck, found dangling as she was. This is because by the time you had hoisted her up, she'd been dead for several minutes, and blood had already begun to pool to the lowest points in the body, so there was no vital reaction to the second rope."

He's trying to focus, but it's hard- his attention is divided between the ground and her mouth.

She seems to read his mind. "Yes, you're quite high, aren't you? At this height, it'll be like a watermelon hitting a semi-truck. You'll have 23 whole stories to feel sorry."

His mouth opens and closes- nothing comes out.

She leans over the railing, resting her head on her arms. "I'm not interested in why you did it. I know why. She was just another face on a disposable document somebody slipped into your hand. I just want you to confirm who ordered it. And after that, I'll let you go. Alive and intact. I'll even give you gil for cab fare." She smiles at the incredulous look on his face. It would be a beautiful smile in any other setting. In this circumstance, it's all teeth. "Don't worry. I always keep my promises. I have the gil in my pocket right here," she said, patting the pocket of her uniform coat.

Byron has to fight hard to keep his eyes from rolling back in his head. He nods at her. She holds up her hand, and the constriction in his throat fades.

"Let's start with a simple question. Did you kill Edea Kramer?"

He shakes his head. "...suicide..." he manages.

Quistis sighs. "As I've said, if you answer all of my questions honestly, I pull you up and you can go wherever you'd like. If you lie, I'm going to cut a little more of this rope. Keep lying, and they'll be folding you into a body bag by the time the sun rises."

"So, let's try again: did you kill Edea Kramer?"

He nods, because at this point, there's nothing else that he can do. One decision leads only down. The other gives him a fighting chance.

"Good," says Quistis. "Let's go from there."

In the end, Quistis is as good as her word. She releases his restraints, and tosses a handful of gil onto the table.

There is a tense moment between them where she knows he weighs killing her, but he eventually turns away, grabbing a few items from his apartment and backing out the door, leaving it open behind him. Whether this is out of respect for her honoring her promise, or because he knows he's outmatched in a fight, she isn't sure.

She watches him walk down the street as the sun comes up and finishes his coffee. She would like to believe that she released Byron out of mercy, out of some small semblance of compassion, but she knows better.

_She has let him go because she knows Ranmor will do worse._

…

…

….

…

.

Quistis moves the rental car from the fashion boutique down the street to the front of guest parking, and removes the magnets screwing up the trace. The Galbadian military car has been bugged to the teeth since she first drove it from the garage, and by someone uncreative enough to stash it behind the front left wheel well.

She goes back up and waits in the apartment for her tail to catch up with her- Byron has a fridge full of exotic fruits and cheeses, and she helps herself. And there he is, her little Galbadian babysitter, clueless, nonchalantly walking alongside the car and glancing along the street.

She makes sure he gets a flash of her leaving Byron's building before disappearing again.

_The hook is set._


	14. Chapter 14

"How was your trip?" he asks her, when she enters the cell.

"You were right," is all she says, letting her bag slip to the floor. There are shadows under her eyes- it looks as if she hasn't slept in the entire four days she's been gone.

"And?" he asks her, sitting also as she slumps onto the cot. He's got new bruises- his right eye is nearly swollen shut.

"And it's taken care of," she replies. She takes a deep breath, lets it out, then reaches into her bag, pulling out a plastic scissors. The electric razor got as far as security before it was confiscated.

"Gonna take a long time to tunnel outta here with those," observes Seifer.

"I thought we could make you a little more presentable," she says, holding up the scissors and gesturing towards his hair.

"What's the point?"

"_I_ have to look at you, for one," she says.

"Fair enough," he replies.

"What's your biggest regret, Seifer?" she asks him, minutes later, as she's cutting off chunks of greasy, snarled hair and cursing the children's safety scissors to high heaven, because this is going to take hours.

"What, in this particular circumstance, or in life in general?" he asks.

"In general," she says.

"Not beating Squall more," he answers.

"Be serious."

"How do you know I'm not being serious?"

She gives him an extra tug on his hair in response.

"Fuck! All right, _sadist_, let me think," he says. "Guess if I had to do it over again, I'd become a fisherman. Always dreamed about having my own boat when I was a kid, sailing wherever I wanted. That was before the whole knight thing. Maybe I'd have better luck as a fisherman."

Quistis tries to imagine Seifer on a boat, throwing nets and casting lines, tanned and muscled by the work. It brings a small smile to her face.

"What about you? Regrets?"

Regrets follow her like lost puppies- she's made a veritable life skill out of ignoring them.

One, however, has always lingered.

For a moment, Seifer thinks she isn't going to answer, but when she does, her voice his quiet, and her fingers still in his hair for a moment. "My second year in SeeD, we were contracted to infiltrate a terrorist sect that had been making attacks at the D-District prison, who'd taken their family members. This was before we understood that most of Deling's prisoners were mainly political dissenters, not hardened criminals. The rebel's main base of operation was an old factory. We infiltrated at night, but they must have been tipped off, and they were armed to the teeth and opened fire immediately. Someone set off a round of explosives- the south wing of the facility started on fire. We eventually made our way through the complex. The back of the building was the residential quarters- by the time we got there, the flames were getting pretty high, and there were a few rooms already consumed by fire. That's when we saw the colored pictures on the walls, on the fridge."

It takes him only a moment. "There were kids in there."

"Yes," she replies, after awhile. "Galbadian intelligence had left that out- I suppose it didn't matter to them, and we didn't know enough about their intel then to double check it. Anyway, we were checking all of the supply closets, looking for surivors, when a woman flew out of one of the ones we hadn't checked. She had a gun, and she pointed it at Chevis, shot him in the shoulder, spun him like a top. I had to take her out…and then I saw the little boy standing in the doorway, still dressed in his pajamas. I'd killed his mother right in front of him. The same thing that had taken my parents away from me…I'd become part of it. The worst part of it."

"You didn't have a choice."

"We always have a choice, Seifer." She replies, quietly, and he can hear the self-reproach in her voice.

She clears her throat, and he knows then that she needs to change the subject. And he lets her. "What would you do, if you got out of here? Aside from become a fisherman."

"I never put much stock in 'ifs'."

"Humor me, then."

"I dunno...guess I'd go back to the ocean, near where we grew up. Work on a boat somewhere...spend days lying out under the sun, like when we were kids."

"Out in the open like that, they'd find you eventually," she points out.

He shrugs. "I'd rather die with the sun on my back than crouch in some hole, waiting for somebody to drag me out of it."

He looks at her. "What good is a question like that, anyway?"

_What good are any of these questions_? she thinks. "I don't know," she says, and starts cutting his hair again.

Seifer feels the gentle pressure of her fingertips on his scalp, light and soothing. He thinks about what Ranmor said. People have accidents every day- if her car went off the road, if there was a fire in the hotel- Quistis is tough, but Ranmor has the entire Galbadian army at his disposal, not to mention the people on his _unofficial_ payroll….

And it's selfish, but he doesn't want to die knowing that he's gotten her mixed up in something she'll never get out of….

"You can quit playing big sister and go home now, you know," he says, jerking away from her. "Go back to your old life, trail after Squall like some damned groupie, play big sister to everyone that outgrew you at the age of six. You got what you needed, right? All your little questions answered, your mission's all finished, and_ I_ sure as shit don't need you here."

The warmth of her hand is withdrawn.

He can feel her confusion, her hesitation- his anger has caught her off guard. "What are you talking about?"

He gets to his feet, not looking at her. "Get the fuck out of here and just forget you ever knew me. We'll both be better off."

To his surprise, she sighs. "You idiot."

"I….what?" His momentum derailed, he simply looks at her, stunned.

"I'm not afraid of Ranmor. And I'm not going back," she says. "I told you already, it's taken care of. Now sit back down and let me finish your hair. It looks even worse now, if that's at all possible."

He simply stares at her for a moment, and though she's nearly two heads shorter than he is, she meets his gaze with the same stubborn look.

_For a moment, he sees her standing there in her cadet uniform, her hands on her hips and worked into a frenzy by something he's said, and he wants to carry her books and sit next to her in the library and whisk her away to the carnival-_

**Dead dreams from a dead man.**

"It's not worth it," he tells her quietly.

"It's also not for you to decide," she says, and her exhaustion starts to leak through again. He knows that if he pushes her again, she will crumble, and she will leave...but he's exhausted, too.

….and he never really wanted her to go in the first place. Besides, he knows if Ranmor is threatening to kill her, he most likely intends to kill her anyway.

"Now, sit and let me finish," she says, gesturing.

He sinks back onto the cot, and the next hour passes in silence. It's not uncomfortable- whether because they're both too tired to have a proper awareness of social conventions, or that after everything that's passed between them one small silence seems insignificant, he isn't sure. After an hour, she gets his hair back to a manageable length- it's the closest approximation she can get to his former hairstyle with dull scissors. He cuts the beard himself, hacking it down to a small stubble. Quistis watches him from the cot. She's brought him a few bars of hotel soap, and he scrubs his face and neck in the sink, relishing in the temporary feeling of cleanliness. He'll do the rest of his body when she leaves.

He runs a hand over his chin, studying his reflection. He almost recognizes himself.

"You remember the time when someone put vegetable oil all over the Garden Hallways?" he asks her, remembering the glorified marble ice rink that had lasted for days, before they could get everything scrubbed down. It was one of the few pranks he _hadn't_ pulled, though he wasn't sure Cid ever believed him.

He remembers Quistis, her books flying, falling flat on her ass in the middle of the hallway and laughing, actually laughing for one brief, beautiful moment before she remembered herself and shoved the stick back up her ass-

No answer. He turns to see what she's doing.

She's fallen asleep sitting up, her head against the wall and her feet folded under her. Quistis Trepe, rank 30 SeeD, falling asleep in a maximum security prison cell, with the prisoner still in it. She's really slipping. He shakes his head, taking the single threadbare blanket in the room and throwing it over her.

She doesn't even stir.

He sits opposite her on the floor, and for the next hour, he watches her sleep.

He wonders if she dreams...or if she even remembers how.


	15. Chapter 15

_Two days left._

She's brought fresh peaches and a carton of chocolate milk, remembering how they used to give themselves ridiculous milk mustaches as kids, and how Edea would laugh. She's also brought cold fried chicken and a fresh herb baguette, which he tears into immediately.

Quistis sits back with her hands in her lap and watches him eat.

The time leaks between them like sand gripped in a fist- each second seems to become lost more quickly than the first. When she first came, she counted the days, and now…now she doesn't want this one to end.

Seifer closes his eyes as he bites into the peach, remembering taste and touch and the other memories that cling to it- warm sunlight, skinned knees, and sticky fingers.

Looking at him as he eats, she can peel back each layer of him: stubborn little boy, angry adolescent, troubled adult, and finally, that last section of him, the one they're going to destroy tomorrow.

Like him, she tries to savor each last second, but harder she holds on the faster it seems to move, edging her a little closer to the despair she knows is waiting for her at the end. Galbadian executions aren't public, and even if they were, she doesn't know if she could go, could stand back and watch Ranmor carry out the sentence.

Over the years, she's watched many people die, but those were in the quick of battle, when she had been, flushed with adrenaline and trying to stay alive herself. She has always raced towards death, carried by the momentum of her orders.

She doesn't know how it would feel to sit and wait for death to come to her.

"Seifer," she says finally, "There are human rights violations here. I could get you a stay of execution, a reprieve from-"

"No thanks," he says, leaning back, savoring the last of the peach and wiping his hands. "This isn't living, it's just waiting to die."

"Isn't there...isn't there anything you want? …anything I can do?"

He grins. "A conjugal visit?" At her pursed lips, he bursts into laughter. "The more you change, Trepe, the more you stay the same."

"This isn't something to laugh about."

"What isn't?"

She gestures. "All this."

"Sure it is. A guy executing me with more blood on his hands than the Liberi Fatali combined? Definition of irony- it's kinda funny, when you think about it."

"I don't think so."

"Well, you've never really had much of a sense of humor," he informs her seriously. "You need to learn to get more fun out of life."

At her silence, he continues. "You didn't actually think we were going to get to grow old, did you?"

"No," she admits. But at some point, she thought they would be able to live a life that was _theirs_.

She gets to her feet, because if she stays any longer...she'll say something stupid.

When did their positions change, she wonders? He has always been the irrational one, the illogical one, the one that fought and raged and willed against the natural order of the world, and here she is at the ending she thought she wanted...and she is falling apart and he is steady.

He smiles at her, standing also. With his hair cut and his face relatively clean, he looks more like the boy she knew...she thought she knew.

"Aren't you going to say goodbye?" he asks her.

She hovers on the edge of breaking- tears are burning a brushfire line along her eyes, threatening to spill over any second, and she knows she cannot, will not, cry in front of him.

"...I can't," she tells him quietly.

Because if she says that word, if it leaves her lips, then he's really going to die.

His smile was is tender as it is mocking. "Coward," he says.

She kisses him.

She can feel the surprised line of his mouth, feel his body tense, and she feels victorious that for once, she's actually managed to surprise him. A second passes, and she can feel the lines of his lips melt into acceptance, feel his body relax into the kiss. As desperate and fierce as she is, he's surprisingly gentle- his hand brushes her cheek like a whisper. He does not resist when she deepens the kiss, pressing her hands to each side of his face and holding him there. His hands hover for a moment, not sure where to land, but then come to rest on her arms, pulling her close, holding her so tightly it almost hurts.

Underneath the stink of the prison and the empty, stagnant air, she feels the warmth of his skin and the hammer of her heart in her ears, and in that moment she feels reckless and vulnerable and afraid. For the first time in a long time, she feels _alive_.

This is wrong, she knows, not because it feels wrong, but because the Galbadian Government has deemed it so. The prison has ears and eyes and a wicked tongue, which is good, because she _wants_ them to see. She _wants_ them to talk. She wants them to see that they can't stop her, that they can't stop things like this.

Her fists bunch against his prison uniform- his hand tangles in her hair. After a minute he pulls away and simply holds her, and she closes her eyes against the touch.

It seems to go on forever, but then he is pulling away from her, his hands pushing gently at her shoulders.

"That'll do." he says after awhile, smiling.

She can't quite look at him as she turns to leave. She hits the door com for a guard to come and release the containment field.

"Quistis?"

She half leans on the door, nodding without turning around.

"One last question, before you go."

She turns, then, and braces herself. She is an inch from breaking, and they both know it.

Just one question, then.

"Why'd you go with me, that night, to the carnival?"

There are so many things she can say, so many answers she can give.

The guard is here, now. Their time is up.

Some answers will protect her, some him.

She chooses none of them. She chooses the truth.

"Because you asked me," she says simply, and with that, she is gone.

Seifer smiles at the closed door.

_He is ready now._


	16. Chapter 16

Quistis sits at the edge of her hotel bed, her hands clasped in her lap.

It is 2100 hours….in less than one day, Seifer Almasy will be executed by the Galbadian Government. It seems as if time is connected, now, as if the present and the future are some sort of terrible singularity- as if he is already dead and there is nothing she can do to stop it.

Her suitcases are packed, and the last of the tapes have been shipped to both Laguna Loire, Odine, and Cid Kramer. She has not bothered to edit them- she finds she no longer cares.

Everything has been completed- all she has to do is get on a train tomorrow, and her old life will be waiting for her. She can pretend this never happened. That he never happened. She can fall into her old life, her old routine, and someday, if she is lucky, she will become a monument that will, as Irvine always says, become a home for moss and pigeon shit.

That old life, with its stale familiarity, holds a strong pull for her even now, because the alternative is as alien and frightening to her as the dark space under her childhood bed.

She is exhausted, mentally and physically. She no longer knows what she came here for. To hate a man she could never hate- to put to bed a memory she knows now can never die. She knows she did not come here to save him…perhaps, in some strange way, she came to save herself, to remember the girl she used to be- the girl who had loved him, once- who had been able to love.

She _used_ to be so many things.

She used to believe in the good of governments and the honor of its soldiers. She used to feel a swell of pride putting on the SeeD uniform- used to treasure her part in it and the feeling of belonging that came with fighting alongside men and women that had been like brothers and sisters. She had thought that if she trained hard, tried hard, that she could bring some peace to the world and to herself. But in her ambition, she had turned a blind eye to the kind of sand she built her castles on, and to the ever-present creeping of the tide.

Governments are run by gil, and people's lives can be bought and sold and traded to achieve a single man's aims, however foolish, if he has enough to fund it. Soldiers are more often than not only as good as their governments. At the end, whatever its original intentions, SeeD ended up as a conduit for that greed. She had dreamed of becoming a hero and had instead become an agent of the same kind of destruction that had taken her parents. Edea and Cid had intended well, but they had fallen into the trap that good people fall into all the time- believing that the world is a just and decent place, when it is a quagmire of lust and ambition. Looking back, in this hotel room, Quistis can see the long, troubled line of her life, and what it made her.

When Quistis was 10, she had killed her first Grat in the Training Center under the watchful eye of Instructor Marek. It was a messy endeavor, and not at all polished- the killing blow that cleaved the body in two had owed more to luck than actual skill, and the whip's recurve had nearly caught her in the eye. She had spent an hour afterwards trying to wipe bits of goopy chlorophyll-laden spatter from each of the links in her whip, to say nothing of the nightmare of trying to get the stains out of her uniform.

At twelve, she summoned GF Shiva with the fastest recorded time on record, a record that remains in the JC Achievement Tome at present.

When she was fifteen, she had killed her first human being, and that was messy also, but for less physical reasons. The debriefing had left her with a bitter taste in her mouth, but it was a taste she learned to swallow. That year, she had become a SeeD.

At seventeen, she brought down her first T-Rexaur by herself without a hair out of place, watching it passively as it thundered to the ground of the Training Center, its eyes still open in surprise.

For all her jaded existence in the world, however, Quistis did not have much experience in the realm of men.

When she was a child, Quistis, like many other little girls, had dreamed of a white knight on an equally pristine horse coming to sweep her into her vaguely wonderful happily ever after. As she grew older, her castle in the clouds became a steel sanctuary for mercenaries.

As she grew older, she realized that little girls had to rescue themselves.

And so she had learned to make hospital corners on her bed, summon demigods, and hang a man with his own shoelace.

Above all, she had learned to be practical- learned to achieve the cool, hard-won distance that practicality brings.

But before that, there was Seifer. Seifer, sneaking a bottle of Odine's Firewhiskey into her one and only detention (and his Hyne-knew-how-many), who convinced her to sneak out after hours to attend a carnival, the boy she pulled into her dorm room while Xu was away…who made her head spin and her mind go blissfully blank.

It was a frightening thing, to give a person the power to hurt you without laying a hand on you. And he had hurt her badly, in the end.

Gale Bevik was in her Melee Combat class when she was training for SeeD, back when she only had eyes for Seifer and, apparently, Gale only had eyes for her. He was young and handsome and a little foolish, but then, it was probably that vulnerability that drew her in the first place, trained as she was to seek it out. When she was training for her Instructorship, Gale had learned her schedule and waited for her after class. He carried her books and opened doors and lost badly to her at Triple Triad, and she wound up sleeping with him for no other reason that she could not see a reason not to. She was young, and the life of the mercenary was short, and she remembered thinking it would be beneficial to have a relationship that wasn't the equivalent of lemon juice in an open wound, to have the kind of security that came from having someone that cared more for you than you ever could for them.

It was_ practical_.

She could recall feeling mostly curiosity as Gale, a boy no older and certainly no wiser than she was, pinned her body with his in the Secret Area, clumsy and eager and boyishly grateful for the opportunity to pump and sweat all over her as she absently ran her hands along his back, listening for the approach of monster or monitor. Overall, she could not remember feeling strongly one way or the other about the experience…about Gale himself. He did not hurt her, which set him apart and beyond most of the people that had until then comprised her small life.

She did not regret their encounter- Gale had worshiped her with all the blind enthusiasm of a seventeen year old boy, and he was always kind and courteous. There was no 'virgin's guilt', as Xu would have called it, not with Seifer and certainly not with Gale- the idea of purity and white dresses on wedding days belonged to girls that had pretty pinafore dresses and wore ribbons in their hair- it had never belonged to Quistis, who had carved a place for herself in the world with her own blood and sweat and tears. She had known for a long time that she would never walk down the aisle in white with a man waiting for her at the end of it- there would be no white picket fences and wedding registries in her future. She would never pick out a china pattern or knit mittens in her old age, because she would most likely never grow old.

She did not think she had loved Gale, exactly. She had allowed him into her life, which was dangerous, and she had cared for him, which was foolish. She knew on some instinctive level that she was smarter and stronger than he- not in any egotistical sense, but in the sense that a cheetah knows that it is faster than a gazelle- with the distance of unassuming biological perspective. She knew in this same vein that he would die eventually in their line of work, but she had cared for him all the same- perhaps because he _would_ die. Gale was the type of boy who came to Garden because he had nowhere else to go, not because he was sharp or merciless or gifted in taking life. And it was true that she'd had nowhere else to go, either, but unlike Gale, she was as ruthless and terrible as a tsunami. She was a rock men broke themselves against.

And a month later Gale had been killed, shot through the skull by a very talented Galbadian sniper while on a reconnaissance mission. Like her, he'd had no family, so Quistis had used her own funds to bury him on a private plot, far away from Garden's textbook rows of small, plain headstones for mercenaries that died without families or funds to bury them. There was something impersonal about that small, neatly clipped cemetery that left a bad taste in Quistis's mouth, and she wanted Gale interred somewhere with trees and birds and bugs, something free and less..._institutionalized_. Just as the uniform had never seemed to fit him, one stone in a row of many hadn't suited him, either. It didn't suit any of them, but then, life was only as fair as she could afford to make it.

Gale had left no burial wishes, so she had stood at the edge of the cemetery and watched the men lower his pine box into the ground, wishing she could find something to say that didn't sound cheap and empty. There was no priest to warble on, no mother or father or sisters or brothers to decorate the grave. Having spent all of her gil on the coffin and the stone, Quistis had picked a handful of wildflowers on her way to the cemetery and placed them on the simple headstone that bore only his name. There was the overwhelming sense of waste, of seeing someone die that had never really lived, but she had not cried- it would have been foolish. There was no future that had ever belonged to her, whether with Gale or without him...there was only the next mission, the next objective, and if she survived it, there would only be more of the same. She would not grow old- she would never buy potted plants to flower on a windowsill, would never walk down an aisle, would never sit on a porch swing and drink iced tea and watch the sun set. She could not cry for something that had never been hers.

Her schoolgirl crush on Squall was next, and after that utter disaster, there were a couple of cookie-cutter career soldiers like herself who said all the right things, pulled out her chair and brought her flowers...and who bored her to tears.

After a few of those, she had busied herself with her instructorship, and, after that, keeping her friends alive. She had become comfortable living a life that wasn't hers, with dedicating her life to people who could and who would live without her, when the time came. Looking back, her interests after Seifer had been little more than boys, and they had never been much of a match for her in terms of skill or spirit, however much she cared for them. In watching her suitors though the years, it was rather like watching a male bird in the throes of a mating dance, all fancy feathers and carefully crafted displays. And she had sat politely and watched every one, knowing all the while she could dance circles around them.

Seifer was not a boy. He had never been a boy. He had never flattered her, never tried to sway her. Men like Seifer were predators- it was in his nature to pursue, not to persuade. And the part of Quistis that was a warrior, that tired of being matchless, had delighted in being won.

Seifer had given her a glimpse at another side of herself- at the girl she would have been, perhaps, had her parents not perished. A girl that laughed and danced and rode Ferris wheels and lost track of the time.

Quistis stares at the clock at the wall, watching the seconds tick past.

_It is time, and past time. _

She gets to her feet.


	17. Chapter 17

Deling's old office is as opulent as his city- mahogany furniture gleams in the light of three large stained glass lamps, and there are several leather chairs and couches located around the room for lounging. A cigar box sits on top of the desk, containing 8 hand-rolled Thruvian tobacco cigars, and a decanter of finest Dolletian brandy sits in a corner, the cut crystal decanter throwing a prism of light onto the lush maroon carpets.

Ranmor sits at his desk, his hands shaking as he holds the letter in his hands.

It is a short letter, deceptively simple:

_President Ranmor,_

_You were right. A snake can bite even if you remove the head._

_The life of Seifer Almasy in exchange for the original.__ Cat-walk, 3rd tier, 1300 hours, 5 miles west of Timber._

The audio tape that accompanies this letter is much less simple, though it brings the same complications.

It is a detailed account of Ranmor's business transactions with local mercs, hidden accounts and misappropriation of public funds, and hits ordered on political opponents made to look like accidents. And, last but not least, the details of the ordered assassination of Edea Kramer, for the purposes of avoiding a public trial. Trabian bank account numbers are listed, and hit lists are recited with damning detail.

It is Byron's voice on the recorder- strange to hear his living voice, as he is drawn and quartered and resting neatly in four double-ply garbage bags at the bottom of the Sayed River.

_A snake can bite even if you remove the head._

Ranmor's thick fist closes around the letter, crumpling it into a ball.

Dirk Dedalus and Grek Tamber are standing at either end of the desk- they shoot each other small glances when they think Ranmor's attention is elsewhere.

They are right to be nervous. Few people that have seen Ranmor angry have also seen the next sunrise.

"The bank accounts, have they been closed and emptied, as I asked?" When he speaks, there is no tremor in it.

"Yes but, and forgive me, President, if the SeeD knew about the bank accounts beforehand, she may also have obtained records of the transactions," says Grek.

"When I want your opinion, I'll ask for it," replies the President. "Besides, the money trail does not lead to me. It leads to you, which would explain your concern."

Tamber swallows, and Ranmor knows he is thinking about those garbage bags weighted down with cinder blocks at the bottom of the murky river bed, and how easily, he, too, he can join them.

The President turns his attention towards his other subordinate. "Dedalus, have the arrangements been made for the prisoner?"

"Everything is in order, sir," replies Dedalus, nodding.

"Good. We will move the prison tonight at 1800 hours." The SeeD is smart to request a meeting on the catwalk- with the paths open, the Prison's safety system prevents it from retracting underground. She does not trust him. This is wise also.

The execution is to be at 1800 hours, and he has a press conference an hour later. Moving the prison is inconvenient, but he can keep to the original timeline, if he hurries.

The girl does not care about crooked politicians- she may even understand, that at this level, everyone is- they have to be, to get things done.

She may not even care about the merc hit- she let Byron go, after all. In her honorable killer's brain, he is not sure what parts dominate, but he feels certain that mercy is not among them. This is reassuring, because it means she does not want to topple his administration, else the Ethics Committee and Senator Pardor with his crones would already be beating down his door, demanding an inquiry. If she is smart, which he thinks she is, she already knows that the information, while damning, will not be enough to remove him from office anyway.

No, the girl has no interest in political reform- she simply, honestly, stupidly wants the boy.

She has blackmail that his enemies in the Senate would kill for, and combat abilities that made her a prodigy at the age of 15- and all she wants out of life is a broken down war criminal with no foreseeable future.

"Do you honestly believe that the girl will make good on her word?" continues his Warden, frowning.

Ranmor laughs. "She is one of the Liberi Fatali. Of course she will."

_He's counting on it._


	18. Chapter 18

It is pitch dark in the prison, save for the hallway lights that occasionally flicker on and off. Somewhere, a few cells over, someone is having their fingers broken. From the sound of it, another cell over, someone is fighting the good fight and losing to an amorous roommate. Not for the first time, Seifer is glad his cell is solitary.

Quistis has been gone for over an hour, and the smell of her perfume is fading, though he can still feel where she kissed his skin. Soon, both impressions will be gone completely.

He has hours before the end, now, maybe more and maybe less- it is difficult to tell in this kind of darkness. There is time, now, to remember.

He draws out one clean, shimmering memory and lets it spread out between synapses, filling his senses with a world completely unlike the hell around him.

_It is a hot summer day- he can smell the mustiness of the soil and the heavy, rich perfume of the flowers as they sway in the salty breeze. Fat bees drone lazily over him, and a few ants trickle across his arm. There is a particularly annoying cicada near his head._

_He's hiding out for awhile-he and Squall have bloodied each other's noses this time, and Zell had positively freaked when he saw the blood, which means everyone else will know in about five seconds. It's only a matter of time before Matron finds him, and gives him one of those disappointed looks he can't stand. _

_The anger that burned in him during the fight with Squall has wandered somewhere else in him now, and he's left with the wet sting of his bloody nose, a fat upper lip that feels more numb than anything else, and a kind of strange, empty peace that often follows his altercations with Squall. The quiet that settles over him in times like this is more hollow than anything, and he wonders, vaguely, if anything else is capable of replacing it._

_The sky is a deep shade of blue today, unmarred save for a few white clouds that roll overhead, momentarily draping the flower field in cool shade. Seifer reaches out his hand- from this angle, it seems as if he can almost reach out and touch one. He closes his fingers around the cloud, imagining it to be cool and soft against his stinging knuckles. The thought is ridiculous, of course, and he drops his hand back into the grass._

_Another cloud comes and goes- this one looks like an old man with a cane, the humped back becoming more pronounced as it rolls out over the plains._

_Butterflies hover overhead, too, their powder-bright wings in blues and oranges and bright yellows flashing as they move among the flowers. One lights onto his knee for a few beats. _

_He stays very still, afraid to shatter the temporary peace of this new little world of his._

_"I thought I'd find you here." _

_A new shadow darkens his perch, and this one has nothing to do with clouds. It's a little girl with golden hair like his and a pair of narrowed blue eyes as bright and blue as the sky behind her. Her knees are skinned, like his, though her clothes are impeccably clean. She's looming over him with an intensity that belies her small frame. As she leans forward to peer down at him, the butterfly flies away, flittering briefly around her head before coming to rest on a daisy. _

_"Seifer, it's time to come in for dinner. Matron's looking for you."_

_"So?" he says, though he feels a twinge of guilt at the thought._

_"So," she says, in that infuriating know-it-all tone of hers, "She's worried about you."_

_He continues to stare mulishly up at the sky, though his moment of peace has been thoroughly broken up by the insistent little harpy looming over him. "You're not the boss of me," he replies._

_Her frown intensifies. "And you've got a bloody nose again," she says, reaching towards him. "Why're you always fighting with Squall?"_

_He jerks his head away as she moves to wipe the blood from his nose, incensed by the motherly touch because it reminds him of another that's gone forever._

_"Let me-"_

_"Go away!" he snaps. "Nobody wants you around, y'know! Not Squall, not Irvine, and not me, neither. Why don't you go take care of crybaby Zell an' leave me alone, anyways?"_

_For a moment, it looks as if Quistis is going to join the wailing ranks of Chickenwuss, but the moment passes and her scowl returns full force. He's toughened her up, these past few months. She hardly cries at all now...but she does hit. Hard._

_"Come on, Seifer," she says, leaning over holding out her hand. "We've gotta go back."_

_Her hair slopes over her shoulders as she bends, forming a kind of sunny halo against the summer sky. But he doesn't take her hand._

_"Why'd you come get me, anyway?" he asks her._

_She shrugs. "Cause."_

_There really is no ulterior motive for Quistis's caring. She defends Zell **because**, she tries to comfort Squall **because**, and she looks for him **because**- it is the very definition, the function, of who she is, and she mystifies him completely. _

_He takes her hand, but instead of letting her pull him up, he pulls her down, landing her in an undignified heap next to him. _

_"Seifer-" she begins furiously._

_"Shut up a second. I'll go back. But I wanna watch the clouds first, and insteada standing over me like some damned school teacher, you're gonna watch 'em, too."_

_She folds her arms and purses her lips, glaring up at the sky. "You're gonna get in trouble, you know."_

_"I'm gonna get in trouble anyways, dummy," he says, rolling his eyes. _

_Seconds tick by, and Seifer relies on the empirically-proven knowledge that Quistis cannot stay mad at him for any significant length of time. Sure enough, little by little, she begins to relax beside him. _

_After a minute of pouting, she says, "So how do you watch clouds, anyway?"_

_"You gotta tell what they are," he says, making it up as he goes along. "Like that one? That's a dragon."_

_"That is not," she says, frowning. "That's a rabbit! See its ears?" she points, her shoulder brushing his as she does so. _

_"Those aren't ears," he says, "They're horns. And besides, that little cloud next to it? That's a big ball of fire he just breathed."_

_She rolls her eyes. "It's a piece of clover."_

_"It's fire." he insists. "And rabbits don't breathe fire."_

_"Maybe this one does," she says. "It's afire-breathing rabbit!" The two of them attempt to visualize such a thing for a moment, before Quistis bursts into giggles. _

_"Okay, so maybe it's a dragon. But this next one...that's a fish."_

_"A fish?__ No way. That's a pirate ship."_

_They argue amicably through at least thirty cloud formations before dusk starts to settle. _

_This time, when she stands, offering her hand to pull him up, he lets herand they both get in trouble for missing dinner._

Alone in his prison cell, Seifer holds onto the memory. For a moment, he feels the sunshine on his face, the heavy perfume of the flowers in his nose, feels the warmth of Quistis's bony shoulder as it presses into his before it fades...lost in the dark...lost forever.


	19. Chapter 19

The wind at the top of the spires is razor-sharp today- it cuts through her light jacket and shreds her careful chignon, whipping her now loose hair about her face in stinging strands.

The walkways are not built of the same stuff as the spires- they seem to sway as she walks out to meet Ranmor, who is standing with two men Quistis has never seen before. Her escort, a Galbadian Elite soldier, walks three paces behind her, having walked her through the metal detector and done a thorough Scan of her person, removing all equipped magic. They are not fucking around anymore.

"Where is Seifer Almasy?" she asks.

"In his prison cell, where he belongs," replies the President easily. "Don't worry, you'll be reunited soon. Now, where are the copies?"

Quistis reaches slowly into her jacket, procuring a manila envelope. She crouches down and slides it across the path, where it comes to a halt at his feet. The President bends over, picking up the envelope and shaking out its contents. "This is everything?"

"Yes."

"These are the only copies?"

"Yes. Byron's deposition, the bank account numbers, they're all there," she says, and he sees with relief she is not stupid enough to lie. "But why care about the bank routing numbers, when none of them are tied to you?"

"Because it's enough for an inquiry, you stupid girl." He hands the envelope to the soldier next to him. "Anyway, I must thank you. It's not every day a man finds a free assessment of the weak points in his administration."

"You must mean the corrupt points in your administration."

"It amounts to the same thing, doesn't it?" replies Ranmor. "And now, for my part of the agreement." He lifts his hand and makes a motion with his fingers, and Quistis hears the click of at least ten safeties disengaging.

Snipers.

"You said you would honor the terms of our agreement," she says, looking around her.

Twelve snipers.

Ranmor smiles. "Oh, I am. I've only changed the manner of your reunion. Seifer Almasy is scheduled to be executed at 1800 hours today, and by happenstance, your execution is in the next five. You'll be together soon, just as I promised. Now, if you'll accompany me down to the prisoner's cell- I believe that watching your execution may be…instructional, for Mr. Almasy."

The girl reaches up to clasp the ornate pin at the tie of her SeeD uniform- a Garden emblem. Her hand lingers there for a moment, then drops again to her side.

"You said you would let him free."

"I lied," says Ranmor, smiling at her.

She smiles too.

"What a coincidence. So did I."

She raises her own hand, and he can see the small plastic detonator there for the merest of seconds before she clicks it.


	20. Chapter 20

Time is a strange thing. He knows, deep down, that there is no such thing, really- time is simply a human measure of entropy, of the universe's slow drift outward towards whatever infinity actually is. Ultimecia understood about time, too- that in compressing it, she was not compressing imaginary hours and seconds and days, but the line of biological function that creates disorderthat creates suffering.

She knew, too, as Seifer did, how efficient a thief time could be, how indifferent and terrible and merciless a predator it was as it ground the ones you loved into dust under its terrible, unyielding weight. Over his lifetime, Seifer had come to appreciate how time's passage could slow or speed up depending how much you wanted something to happen...or how much you didn't.

He finds himself strangely immune to time today.

He has no idea if it is morning or night- the interrogation room has no windows, save for a thin slot over the door, and the spires themselves have none.

Ranmor ordered him placed in the room early this morning and put him in the shackles. It's a familiar room- Ranmor's ordered him here before for 'debriefing', and he was here once with Squall. He's felt the all-consuming pain of the current before, of feeling like his body will split open down to his bone marrow, and the undeniable dread that follows the cessation of the horrible pain because you know, undoubtedly, there will be more of it.

Ranmor has programmed the torture machine to go off at regular intervals until he can see to Seifer personally- ideally, says the President, it will leave enough marbles rolling around in his head to appreciate the full extent of what Ranmor plants to do later. Seifer's already been through two of the shocks and wants it to happen soon, while he can keep his composure, before he betrays himself. He does not want Ranmor to have any satisfaction in it, whatever he'll print to the newspapers later.

He thinks of Squall along the currents of that pain, and along with him, the ants he used to burn with Cid's old spectacle lenses. Cruelty is a matter of perspective- you can't feel real, honest guilt until you become an ant yourself.

He hears the wiring hum to life behind him again and braces himself for another volt of current, but it doesn't come.

Instead, he hears the metallic whir of doors unlocking along the halls, one by one...and the resulting bafflement of the prisoners, who are calling out to one another.

And then the alarm sounds- divided as it is between the three spires, the echo is almost deafening. Seifer cranes his head to the door, but he can only see flashes of movements, pick out one or two shouts-

"Someone's overridden the security codes! Get the Warden!"

"Fuck the Warden, somebody get in the control room!"

"Back in your cell! I said back in your cell, or I'll blow your fucking brains out!"

Suddenly, the ground shakes again, and Seifer can feel the entire structure shift. It's a sickening feeling, accompanied by the faint scent of smoke wafting under the door.

New alarms are sounding now, and lights are turning on and off and on again. The entire building has gone insane.

A rumble sounds from down below and the building shakes again, causing the restricted cells to bang together like boxcars on a train, and, for the first time, Seifer is glad he isn't in one. He tugs on the cuffs holding him hostage, but they're welded steel, and the resistance only serves to cut at his skin, making his wrist slippery with blood.

A mechanical voice comes onto the com system, cool and utterly devoid of the panic that's escalating around them.

"Attention, all personnel- please secure the cells and evacuate the building. This is not a drill."

The smell of smoke is becoming more pungent, and Seifer can hear the footfalls of guard and prisoner alike running for their lives. He tugs again at the restraints, but he might as well be welded to the platform.

"Attention, all personnel- please secure the cells and evacuate the building. This is not a drill."

More smoke under the door, and he wants to laugh- he's going to die before his own fucking execution.

And then the pain comes- another of the randomized shocks Ranmor's programmed into the machine. Powerful current arcs along every cell and he slams his head back into the wall behind him, teeth clamping down on the edge of his tongue. There's no energy to scream, even if he wanted to- every muscle shrinks back against its bone in the midst of the earth-shattering pain.

He doesn't know how long it lasts this time (seconds, years) before it stops abruptly, leaving him slumped and boneless against his restraints.

Gunfire flares up in the hall, followed by another shout.

Suddenly, his restraints release and he drops, smacking his knees hard on the floor as he lands.

His cell door opens, and Quistis is standing there- long plumes of fire curling in the hallways, her eyes lit with her magic as brightly as the flames burning behind her, and he knows it's a dream. It has to be.

She looks like a goddess, then- like a sorceress, and for the moment, an old fear grips him.

But then she reaches out to him, palm open, _and she is the little girl from the island again, unyielding and irritating, standing among the flowers with the sun in her hair- _

_"It's time to go home. Matron's looking for you."_

What?

Dizzy, he looks up at her, and the memory fades as he slams headfirst into reality, his nerves on fire.

"-blow in another four minutes, we don't have much time," she is saying, glancing behind her.

"What the hell are you doing?" he shouts, trying to make himself heard above the roars and the fire surrounding them.

"Rescuing you, what does it look like!" she shouts back before slumping against the side, and he can see the bright smear of blood on the wall she leaves behind.

Reality seems to sink in, and-

One, this is not a dream, and

Two, Quistis is alive and well and injured...and she's blown the fucking prison up.

"You idiot!" he shouts at her, trying to move her arm so he can see how bad it is.

She shakes her head. "It's fine." She has not released his hand, and she tugs on it now.

He resists the pull. "_Are you fucking out of your head_!" he shouts at her, feeling confusion and anger and elation all at once. A few minutes ago, he was ready to die, and now...

The look she gives him is one part exasperation, one part impatience. "Are you coming, or not?"

_"Why'd you come get me, anyway?"_

_"Cause.__.."_

She leads the way, and he follows.


	21. Chapter 21

The D-district prison is now not so much a holding facility for the enemies of Galbadia but a pile of smoldering, indistinguishable rubble of twisted metal. Squall nudges half a toilet seat over with his boot, watching as it tumbles down father into the pit where three giant spires once stood.

"What the hell happened here?" asks Brea Zenir, looking at the wreckage. Being Ranmor's second-in-command, she has temporarily taken over Ranmor's duties as Galbadian President until he can be contacted, or, more likely, _extracted_ from the rubble.

Rumor has it that she's only half as corrupt as Ranmor was.

"It looks like someone blew up your prison," he says tonelessly, glancing behind him, where Selphie, Irvine, Rinoa and Zell are talking, their faces grave. From the looks of it, a good deal of the prisoners have escaped, but Squall is not particularly bothered. A large number of them were political prisoners of Deling that Ranmor had never bothered to release.

"This is damage brought about by magic-"

"-and plastic explosives wound around the base of the spires," continues Squall. 

The tall towers have broken off at the base with the force of the explosion- between the head and the pressure, they have bent like cocktail straws and twisted inward. Small debris has scattered for miles, but most of the damage has remained with what's left of the original structure.

The President narrows her shrewd eyes at him. "Your SeeD was on the premises when it-"

"My SeeD is also missing, if you've noticed," replies Squall coldly.

"For now," says Zenir, her mouth grim. "And the traitor Almasy-"

"Search the wreckage," replies Squall, "My soldiers are at your disposal."

Squall and the others leave the next day. The teams find bone splinters and shards of tooth amongst the scraps of metal and the chunks of blistered concrete, but Squall does not participate in the search. He knows she isn't among them, in the same way he knows this isn't over.

…

….


	22. Chapter 22

The white sand of the island shore is soft like silk sheets between her toes, and the sun is warm draped across every inch of her skin that isn't already covered by his.

He's sleeping now; she can hear the quiet thunder of his heartbeat beneath her cheek. Measured beats, measured music, like the chorus of the waves that ebb in and out, kissing the tips of her feet. They haven't bothered with clothes- there's no one else on the island, and she likes the feeling of being unencumbered. They spend their days walking the beaches, cracking open coconuts and swimming in the surf. Sometimes they venture back to the main islands for provisions. At night, they make fires and drink cheap wine. He is teaching her to dance.

Far away, across that water, another world exists, but she doesn't think of it now. It will come to her soon enough.

She finds that there is no fear in her- that there is only the simple joy in _now_ and the vague possibility of _later_. There have always been wolves at the gates of their world- hungry, prowling, always waiting to claim that last bit of life that the war had missed as it swept across their small, insignificant worlds. Even as a child she had known it. She used to be frightened of it, of that hungry end waiting somewhere, sometime, that same set of jaws that had swallowed her parents and the life she might have had with them. As a child, it had always seemed so close by, edging ever-closer to swallow the remainder. She used to wake up at night shaking with the fear of it.

She is not afraid now. The wolves have always been there...they have become them.

"What if…" she murmurs, "...what if this is all just a dream?"

His eyelids flicker. His lips brush her temple as he speaks. "…does it matter?"

"…no," she replies, after a moment. "It doesn't."

She closes her eyes and eventually, she dozes, lulled to sleep by the sound of his living heart beneath her cheek.


	23. Chapter 23

"We found her." It ought to bring joy to say it, but it doesn't, and it gives him no joy to hear it.

"Where?" asks Squall.

"Eluna Island, off the Centra coast."

"Is she with him?"

"...yes." Xu looks away.

"Then leave them there." Squall looks back down at his paperwork.

"It isn't that simple. If we know, it's only a matter of time before the Galbadian authorities find them, and then weve got a mess on our hands. Theyll accuse us of the attack, and theyll move to disband the Gardens."

They don't look at eachother.

She was friend, sister, soldier...and now she is a traitor.

"She managed a year. Most people wouldnt have managed a week."

"I know," replies the commander.

He knows many things, all of them pointing to the inevitable.

"But with her, at least, we could bring her back-" starts Xu.

"No. We couldn't."

"Why not?"

"Because she wouldn't come back." He's as sure of this as anything.

"Then what? We let them find her? Do you _know _what will happen if the Galbadians find her first?"

He knows. the Galbadians will make an example out of both of them, and SeeD will have to make a choice- to champion one soldier, or to take on a nation.

"I'll take care of it," he says.

Youll take care ofbut Squall-

He looks at her. They both know it has to be done. The question is only whonot when.

Xu's eyes are bright. "Should I get the others?"

"No."

Rinoa will know in time, but the better if the others never find out.

He stands.

"Get the Ragnarok ready."

..

.

..

.

They talked about it once, on the way back from a mission.

The Trabian snow storm had upgraded to a blizzard- with zero visibility, they had been forced to wait it out trapped inside the G-V land rover, which had two gas tanks and a decent, working heater. Soaked to the bone from battling a particularly nasty Wendigo, they'd spent the next two hours drying out while they waited for the storm to roll over them.

"There's something I wanted to ask you."

He'd never been any good at transitioning into a conversation, not like Quistis, who could slip so elegantly into conversation it reminded him of a duck in water, all seamless and subtle.

His conversations always seemed more like cannonballs- abrupt and displacing, though he had no idea how to fix it, not having much practice in the art.

"Yes?" she'd asked, in the process of trying to dry her gloves against the heating vent. They'd been quiet with each other for the past two hour. In the past, he knew she would have tried to talk to him about the mission, or asked him about what he was doing, how he was feeling, what was new with Rinoa or whether he thought that Selphie's appointment to admissions would bring more cadets in or scare more away.

Since the war, she'd been more withdrawn- she was always polite, always cordial when they were all together and always friendly when they were together, but she did not reach out to him anymore. He found himself missing it- her little conversations, her sometimes irritating observations, and always, always, the warmth and kindness of her attention...though he knew he didn't deserve to. How many times had he pushed her away, as a child and as an adult? Even Quistis, it seemed, had limits.

"Do you think it's a good idea, Rinoa being here at Garden?" he'd asked her.

"Where else would she be?" asked Quistis.

"With people not trained to kill her," he's said, which was the simplest summation of what he'd been thinking.

Quistis finished laying her gloves against the radiator and was now working on her socks, peeling them off in soaked strips and laying them against the radiator. At this question, however, she set them down and gave him her full attention. "I think it's appropriate, where she is, and I think Rinoa thinks so, too."

"She does?" The thing with Rinoa was still new, still frightening in its strange intensity- he was not used to another human being with thoughts and the desire to share them with him, and feelings that had somehow become partially his responsibility.

"I think it's nice, this thing you have with Rinoa. And I think you should enjoy it as long as you can. But I think you should take it seriously, too. I don't think the whole world should burn for two people, do you?"

Its a cruel thought, but its also the truth.

"You'd help me, then? If it ever got that far?" New, too, is the concept of 'Friends', of people you could ask for help and who were, for some reason, also willing to do it.

She had given him a look that was serious, and a little disappointed.

"Of course, Squall," was all she'd said.

"Look, Quistis-" he's started, but she was already looking out the window, leaning over the dash to wipe away the condensation that had gathered from their breath. "The storm's cleared a bit- I think we can go, now," she'd said, and the moment was lost.

_I don't think the world should burn for two people, do you?_

He knows that she will be expecting him.

..

..

.


	24. Chapter 24

The ancient Centrian culture had a belief about war. They believed one should not look into an enemy's eyes when killing them, lest your opponent take a piece of you along with them before they transcended into the next world. Along this belief, they called their most powerful warriors the 'Cruci Olem', or 'Hollow Men', as they believed very little of a great warrior's own soul remained after taking so many to the afterlife.

At the time he had heard the story, Squall had thought it a ridiculous tale, saturated with the fear of a culture that still needed gods. But the Centrian's beliefs, however antiquated, sit at the forefront of his mind now as he walks down the beach, his sword clenched in his fist.

He is not surprised to see her waiting for them at the shore, standing near the water's edge and watching their approach. She flexes her hands as they approach, an old habit from battle.

It is a beautiful day- the sky is sunny and cloudless, and somewhere, a bird is singing. None of this beautiful place belongs in this moment.

Her eyes flicker like steel-blue flames as they take him in, and for a moment, he thinks she will fight him. The outcome will be questionable if she does- he is stronger, physically, but her magic has secrets far beyond his own abilities. All things considered, he is at a disadvantage.

His fingers close tighter around his sword handle.

Her hair is longer, loose around her shoulders- her once pale skin has tanned a soft, golden caramel from the sun.

Her dress is a white, loose eyelet that flows around her legs like ripples of a wave. She is glorious and different and utterly Other to his logical, iron-pressed world- she is almost a stranger.

But then she opens her arms, spreading them wide in welcome. Her gaze is fixed on only him- the others around him do not exist.

He looks into those blue, perfect pools of light and warmth, and he knows she regrets nothing. She has razed a corrupt government's monument to the fear and oppression of its own people to the ground, she has saved a man's life, and in the process, she has freed herself.

She is a goddess here on these white shores- she is free and she is unencumbered by men's laws, and she is not sorry.

She smiles, and she is his sister again- she is the little girl that reached out to him, the young woman that taught him and that advised him, the girl that waited to be needed.

For a moment, he falters.

He knows he cannot fight the world for her- more than that, he knows she would not want him to.

But the sword is so heavy

Seifer comes out then, running from the cottage- the knight, the betrayer, his green gaze sharp as he takes them in, takes her in, as understanding comes swift and terrible to his face. For a moment, Squall thinks he will fight, too, but his attention is only for her, for getting to her in time.

The SeeDs around him start forward, but Squall orders them back with a raised hand. This mission is his- the SeeDs are only to act if he fails to.

Though it feels like a boulder, Squall raises the gunblade.

Her arms are still open. She smiles and closes her eyes.

He knows in that moment, she understands. She understands that it is over, this small, perfect piece of heaven that people like them are never supposed to have. She understands that he is here because he loves her- that, if their positions were reversed, she would have come for him, too...and he knows that he would have wanted her to.

It is quick- it has to be, while he still has the stomach to do it.

She falls backwards in a slow arc, hair billowing behind her and the red stain on her dress spreading like a rose blossom, the area around it blackening with the force of the blast. The water rushes in to wet her hair.

He likes to think she does not feel it, that her transition from life to death is a quick as a hummingbird's blink as the gun's fire tears through her heart.

In reality, he knows that her heart manages a few more beats before it stops- that she has time to feel the water on her cheek, the sand on her thighs, hear Seifer's agonizing shout as she sinks into the surf.

Squall brings up Leonhart again, breathing hard.

This death is not as clean- Squall's eyes are blurred as he raises the weapon, as the gun buckles against his shoulder and the blast leaves the barrel. Seifer drops to his knees, stunned with the force of the hit but still alert, and for the merest of seconds, their eyes meet.

There is no apology in his eyes. Her name is the last thing to leave his lips.

The second shot tears through his chest and he slumps beside her then, his hand falling just short of her as his body collides with the sand.

Squall takes a breath. For a moment, he feels nothing- his heart is a vacuum, and his senses reel, directionless, taking nothing in.

And then it hits him all at once.

He lowers his arm and plunges his sword into the sand.

_He hates them all. _

_Galbadia__._

_Ranmor__._

_Cid._

_SeeD__._

_For a moment, he knows exactly how Ultimecia felt._

He turns begins to walk, focusing all his energy on putting one foot in front of the other.

"Sir, your sword-" says one SeeD.

"Leave it." he says, and keeps walking.

It can rust there. He will never lift it again.

...

...

...

...

..

.


	25. Chapter 25

Every year, she visits the graves.

The island is calm and sunny, and the flower field hums with bees and an occasional bird song. There is the ever-present rush of the ocean also, lapping against the ruins.

It is a good place to sleep.

She always brings flowers with her: lilies for her, for majesty and pride, white roses for him, for purity and remembrance. She lays them across the burial mounds, where flowers are now beginning to grow. The headstones are blank.

Sometimes she sits and talks with them- others, she simply sits; the cold, gleaming stones before her seem to reach out from their white marble faces.

They whisper their hellos.

She whispers that shell see them soon.

She is sad for them, but happy, too, and she finds that her joy is the enduring of the two emotions.

They had one whole, perfect year together, and they had lived more in that single stretch of days than most people could manage in a lifetime. All stories end, the wolves at the gate will come for them all in time...

...so you have to make those stories worth telling while they're yours.

A butterfly lights on a stone, its pale blue wings beating like a heart- fragile and small and insignificant, but beautiful all the same. She smiles and closes her eyes.

She understands, as they did, that the tragedy is not to die...but not to live.


End file.
